It's not even midnight yet and sixteen-year-old Artie Crenshaw, working the night shift at a cannery in Oregon, has been let go early--a slow, summer night, raspberry season running out, blackberries not yet started--and Artie has the family car with nothing to do until morning chores on the farm. Nothing to do, that is, except clash with some greasers outside the bowling alley in town, meet Reta Jane and slaughter a pig dying of a heart attack, get shot at in a cherry tree and help fix a Ferris wheel at the county fair, stumble across Wendy and get stuck in a ticket booth with two hoods trying to make him kiss pictures in a magazine, fight a rival at the local lovers' lane, have a run-in with an angry woman in a tent on the banks of the Sandy River and encounter Colleen there, a new girl in town. With the ominous specter of his dad's pickup flashing by, Artie charges through disaster after disaster, a night-long series of adventures and encounters that leads him, after a final confrontation with his father, to the top of a Ferris Wheel and--just maybe--to the girl of his dreams.
