The Sons of Starmount: Memoir of a Ten-Year-Old Boy is the story of a wild band of boys living on a once-in-a-lifetime street. Most of us have a time and place in our childhood that sets the course for the adult we grow up to be. I found mine: Starmount Drive, Tallahassee, Florida,1977.

Starmount is filled with poignant, hilarious, and soul-stirring stories of adventure and friendship, uniquely told through the prism of 1977. We were blood brothers on homemade rafts, defying alligators, water moccasins, and common sense. Muhammad Ali fought on the TV while we built boxing rings in the backyard. The Space Shuttle Enterprise shot through the heavens as we launched wooden spacecraft down metal guy wires from high atop our fort.

The campfire-like glow of our streetlight hosted weighty conversations that ranged from remaining friends forever and finding all the best fishing holes on the planet Mars to Ted Bundy's murderous rampage through the Florida State campus.

Starmount is in the tradition of other coming-of-age standards, such as The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sadaris, and Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon. It also captures elements of Southern life in a style akin to My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South by Rick Bragg and The World's Largest Man by Harrison Scott Key.

Mark Elliott