Inflating a dog

the long version

"Ella Leroy dreams of escaping the dreary routine of her 1950s wife-and-mom suburban life in the beach town of Babbington. Without telling her husband, she enlists her son Peter and his locally notorious schoolmate Patti in a scheme: to buy a rundown clamboat and reinvent it as an elegant cruising vessel for summer people. But after Arcinella is purchased, Peter discovers that she is slowly sinking - and so each night he sneaks from his house to the harborfront of Bolotomy Bay, where he pumps the boat dry and so inflates his mother's hopes for a bit longer.". "From these beginnings, Eric Kraft has fashioned a novel about everything from kitsch iconography, adolescent lust, and the sadder wisdom of adults, to an explanation of how a bilge pump works, an elegy for lost time, and a stroll along the boardwalk of memory and imagination."--BOOK JACKET.