Once Upon a Time a Boy Lived on Lake Minnetonka

Eddie is supposed to be asleep when the minister arrives. Instead, he listens from the crack of the bedroom door: "Dear God, we beseech you to let this man die quickly." At age ten, Eddie's happy life on Lake Minnetonka is shattered when his dad dies from cancer. Without health or life insurance, the family falls into poverty. Relatives and friends tell him he needs to be the man of the family. It's more than he can handle. He has an emotional breakdown. Nobody notices. These are the memoirs of Eddie's search for meaning in a world gone wrong. His struggles with God and search to understand the value of life leave him with questions no adult can answer. If a good man can be randomly forced to suffer and die, and his mother thrown into a dark, depressing life without hope, how can he justify the God of his faith? Why should he strive to be spiritually and ethically good? Eddie's fall from innocence and search for answers take him beyond this world and into those without literal existence - nightmarish worlds with people who better understand him and his plight - Mr. Orange, Mrs. Blood and Mr. Bones, Mr. Balloonman, Dark Shadow, the Mad Hatter and others. Can he survive in this world? As he becomes friends with these "people," can he find the meaning he seeks?