What Is Real Author:Karen Rivers Dex Pratt is seventeen years old, a star basketball player and a budding filmmaker. And his life has been turned upside down. His parents have split up and his mother has remarried and taken him to a new life in the city. When his father attempts suicide and fails, Dex returns to their small town to care for him. He is not, however, prepared for... more » how much everything has changed. Gone is the suburban split-level on the outskirts of town. Gone are the new cars, fancy bikes and other toys. Now he and his wheelchair-bound dad live in a rotting rented house at the back of a cornfield. And, worse, his father has given up defending marijuana growers in his law practice and has become one himself.
Unable to cope, Dex throws his camera in the trash and begins smoking himself into a state of surrealism. He begins to lose touch with what is real and what he is imagining. And then there are the aliens And the crop circle And the girl-of-his-dreams
What Is Real presents a poignant portrait of suburban family life gone south. Dex Pratt is smart, funny, creative and compulsive; he's also angry and disillusioned. But most of all he's a character that readers won't soon forget.« less