Reptile romance: a memoir

"Harley Elliott's teenage adventures took him places where he was "lost in the implacable Blue Racer's eye, the Bull Snake's pugnacious grimace, the combination of pattern and design." Simultaneously funny and poignant, this narrative of a few years at the end of a 1950s Kansas boyhood allows us access to the internal life of a thoughtful, horny, reptile-obsessed teen. That teen finds friends and unlikely mentors through a shared interest in snakes of the prairie, and thus the discoveries begin. It's true that Reptile Romance is a book about learning to catch and hold snakes while trying to figure out how to catch and hold girls. But Elliott's memoir trusts us to comprehend something more vital: the genesis of a worldview that will carry a man forward through a life in nature, poetry, and art. -Written by Lori Brack"-- Provided by publisher.