Eight-year-old Mark Cloud's family moves from Fort Worth to Ohio just when California's flower children are spreading their message of peace and love throughout the country and beyond. It's a challenging time for the whole nation --- and for Mark, whose Texas upbringing did little to prepare him for the hippies he observes, the black neighbor he befriends, or the homeless woman he meets.
The woman, whom Mark dubs the Creature, makes curious and disturbing comments that keep him coming back for more. In a lucid moment, she tells him a chilling story that will have ramifications throughout his adolescence --- even after his family moves once again, this time back to Texas and the tiny community of Fred. By now, though, Mark is a preteen who has adopted the clothing style of Ohio's hippies, something that does not set well with the jeans-and-cowboy-boots crowd in his new school.
Mark makes periodic stabs at trying to fit in, even to the point of using less-than-perfect grammar. But as a PK (preacher's kid), the situation at times looks pretty hopeless, even after he converts to denim. Worst of all, he begins to question the very existence of God, placing him squarely in no-man's land, a place right smack between the world and the kingdom. The clouds part and the sun breaks through, though, when his father announces that the family will take a summer vacation to California, the Mecca of Mystical Hipness, the place where Mark is sure he'll find the answers to all those adolescent questions that plague him.
What ensues is a comedy of errors, the kind of car trip that makes participating parents ask each other, "What were we thinking?" There are the usual car problems that become unusual in a PK's world and strange encounters with even stranger people. And Mark's father's unwavering trust in the professional courtesy of one clergyman to another results in a priceless visit with "Elder Nelson." Finally, the family reaches California --- where an unlikely link to the Creature jolts Mark out of his state of spiritual uncertainty, and where he also discovers his true identity as a pale and skinny kid from East Texas.
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