Lester Doodle, an archetypal innocent American teenager, escapes from a mental institution in upstate New York and flees to Manhattan where he hopes to find personal freedom and liberation from his intense feelings of insecurity and loneliness. The narrative of his comic, perilous, and often deeply affecting adventures—told through a series of letters between Lester and his doting and eccentric mother, Gertrude Doodle, who lives in the fictional upstate town of East Canolysville, New York—includes universal themes of class struggle and young love, as well as the profound and emotionally challenging experiences of confronting homophobia, ethnic and racial prejudice, and the painful complexities of wounded soldiers’ heroism and self-sacrifice contrasted with the ultimate insanity and senselessness of war.
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