An adventurous literary ride that takes you to the heart of family, love, and memory. Welcome to Appleseed, Massachusetts, where stories grow in soil, sentences are kept as pets, and pianos change your point of view. Golden Delicious chronicles one family's arrival in the small town and the narrator's rich, vivid childhood — driving to the local flea market with his father and sister, causing trouble at school, pedaling through the neighborhood on his Bicycle Built for Two. When a curious infestation causes a blight in the soil, though, the local economy sours and the narrator's family is torn apart. His mother joins a flying militia known as The Mothers; his father takes an all-consuming job; his sister runs away for a better life elsewhere. Who will save Appleseed? Will it be the Memory of Johnny Appleseed? The Mothers? The narrator himself? Heartbreaking, funny, and wildly-imaginative, Golden Delicious is a tour-de-force unlike anything you've ever read before. Fans of Karen Russell and Italo Calvino will love Christopher Boucher's new novel, a follow-up to his acclaimed 2011 debut How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive. You'll root for the narrator and his pet sentence, laugh at their absurd predicaments, and cheer for the family at the core of this drama that, despite every obstacle, fights to stay together

It’s hard being a single-dad raising a son — especially if your kid is also a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. There’s nothing more troubling than having your child break down on the side of the road, leaking oil, overheating, and asking tough questions like, “What is death?” and “Why did Mom leave?” But stay calm! Because How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is not only a dizzyingly beautiful novel, it’s also a handy manual with useful chapters on “Tools and Spare Parts,” “Valve Adjustment,” “How To Read This Novel,” and, most important of all, “How Works a Heart.” Welcome to Christopher Boucher’s zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that tackles some of life’s biggest questions: How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?