FERRET ISLAND

From an author who fairly defines “quirky” comes a downright loopy journey into territory both mythic and gleefully ridiculous. Will Finn is a typical Jennings leading man, narrating his tale as though he is wearing a tie throughout, regardless of his circumstances. Having run away from home, he falls off a tourist steamboat out of Memphis and washes up on an unnamed and nearly deserted island in the middle of the Mississippi. Although he is somewhat dubious to find that the island is teeming with a herd of gigantic feral ferrets, he philosophically makes do, living on the flotsam cast up by the Big Muddy and thrilling to discover that the island’s other human inhabitant is none other than Daschell Potts, enigmatic author of the existential children’s classic Folderol. The reader has no alternative but to suspend disbelief and let the ludicrous events unfold, as former child star Julia Tufts and felonious ex-Congressman Narf variously aid and hinder Will as he attempts to thwart Potts’s insane scheme to take his army of colossal ferrets into America’s heartland to bring the McDonald’s empire to its knees. Terrific, vintage stuff. (Fiction. 10-14)