Boonville is one of those protagonistic viewpoint stories where the main character is a normal, everyday human – surrounded by absolute freaks.

A debut novel from Robert Mailer Anderson, Boonville focuses on a life-changing week in the life of John Gibson, who leaves his Miami life – including a girlfriend, family and job – to live in his eccentric dead grandmother’s cabin in a remote Northern California town called Boonville.

In Anderson’s prologue, he emphasizes the pure fiction of his story, even though there really exists a remote Northern California town called Boonville, which he grew up in. He explains that this is “not some thinly veiled autobiography” and tells any rednecks of Boonville “who can read” that he apologizes for any coincidental similarities, and to any hippies who take offense he says, “tough shit, hippie.”

So before page 1, we already get a feeling for the purely honest and brutal characterization about to come.

This book is about characters. It’s not about good versus evil, or right versus wrong. It’s not about “learning” something or how to apply a message to one’s life. It’s about taking a microscope to any town in America and super-analyzing the members of the community and being shocked at what is going on.

Of course, if any town in America truly looked like the Boonville in Boonville, eventually a S.W.A.T. team would have to be called in, and the result could possibly make Waco look like a family picnic.

In Boonville, John Gibson isn’t sure if he’s trying to find himself, or trying to hide from himself. A Miami marketing professional with no practical skills, John escapes from his previous life and hopes to start fresh in his grandmother’s town. But in Boonville, strangers are not easily accepted and rarely go unnoticed. Getting kicked out of Boonville, might be the best thing for John, as he is immediately pegged as the “squirrel boy,” grandson of the eccentric “squirrel lady,” known for her bizarre and over-the-top squirrel carvings.

Within his first 24 hours, John meets a whole gambit of characters, including Sarah, a hippie-by-association, who lives in a militant commune with her mother. Sarah, like John, is trying to escape her life – except Boonville is what she’s trying to escape from. John also gets to meet Daryl, Sarah’s lumberjack, ass-kicking, redneck ex-husband, who only needs a few hours since John’s arrival to learn of John and Sarah’s brief acquaintance. Hap is the local bartending wiseman, who speaks a local garbled dialect version of the English language. Blindman is a blind, wife-beating, drug dealer (who is also the town's baseball team home plate umpire). There’s Cal, the local sheriff, who would rather negotiate the peace then enforce the law. (“If you don’t want to get your ass kicked by Daryl then don’t talk to Sarah.”) The Kurts are a pair of twin brothers that can’t tell each other part, and enjoy head-butting until unconsciousness sets in. Pensive Prairie Sunset is John’s grandmother’s best friend, a rather large hippie woman, who tries to steer John in the right direction. But in her overzealous protective affection, nearly kills him with her bosomous hugs and even maces him during a Daryl ass-kicking.

Between avoiding Daryl, the Kurts and Blindman, John learns practically nothing about himself that would help him in his new start – and instead gets caught up in a plan to help Sarah escape from Boonville, that oddly enough involves the help of the entire town.

Boonville is downright ludicrous – and had me laughing out loud. I’m hoping Robert Mailer Anderson has simply got an extremely warped imagination. Because if anything about this story is autobiographical, God help him.