by Roy Edward Jackson
 
His father took a drunken fall in the shower and never walked again. His mother walked out of the maternity ward and never looked back. And his grandmother ditched her dream job to keep the family afloat. Everyone said his arrival cursed them—but no one ever told him why.
 
Now thirteen, JP is finally ready to chase the truth. Between visits to his father in the nursing home, sneaking whiskey gingers with his older sister, and serving at Catholic funerals for tip money, he digs into the family mythology surrounding his birth. What he uncovers is messy, funny, cruel, and sometimes tender—love disguised as damage.
 
Set in a cereal-factory town where the saints are as flawed as the sinners, Reel Around the Fountain is a queer coming-of-age novel about music, mythmaking, and the burden of being the day everything changed.