Quaker pastor Gulley has made a name with his funny and folksy stories set in Harmony, Indiana, and featuring a Quaker pastor. Those fictions could easily be considered autobiographical, and perhaps to distance his life from his fiction, he here offers his recollections of childhood and adolescence in . . . Indiana (Danville, though). They're daffier than the stories. Oh, they start out innocuously enough, on such nostalgia-rousing themes as the new house, the baby picture, the paper route, family vacations, Halloween, the bike, church, chores, the traveling carnival, driving, pranks, and so on. In fairly short order, however, each takes a sharp turn into exaggeration and keeps on turning. Garrison Keillor has nothing on Gulley for wringing the ludicrous from the mundane, but Gulley is never foul-mouthed or louche, and that despite the interest in girls that inevitably emerges in this growing boy's life. The book this one is most like may be James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times. OK, not that near-surrealistically inspired. But as flat-out hilarious? Very nearly.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2009 Booklist

Some kids were evidently not unhappy growing up, but they can still get pretty good childhood memoirs, especially if they are honest about exaggerating. Quaker pastor-author Gulley (the Harmony series) writes a low-key Hoosier who's who in this memoir set in Danville, Ind., where youthful acting out takes the form of hurling tomatoes and detonating cans of bug spray. Danville includes Quaker widows aplenty, pals named Peanut and Suds, an arthritic and deaf police dog and a mousery that provisions Indiana's homegrown pharmaceutical manufacturer, Eli Lilly. Gulley has no shortage of material, and the teenage years naturally bring an attack of hormones that prompts pathetic, doomed crushes. We even manage to learn a few facts about the humorist, such as that Gulley grew up Catholic. His chief object of fun is his youthful self, which takes the edge off his views of other characters from his youth, many of whom are relatives. Humor beats nostalgia and drama; this stuff is a laugh-out-loud tweaking of a not terribly misspent youth. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved