It's summer, 1965. School's out and Butch's birthday is in a few weeks. Perfect; three months of freeze tag, hide and seek and riding his bike way past dark. Well, maybe not completely perfect — Frank Vaughn, a classmate, is beaten to death by his crazy mother for leaving a report card at school. Dad is touchier than ever and Mom sadder, so best to hide out next door with his best friend Tommy reading X-Men and hoping for that birthday GI Joe. But, in one night, Butch's summer explodes and he's now riding across a turbulent and changing Dixie in a white Rambler station wagon, at the mercy of a manic depressive and wildly violent Dad. Like a crewman on Ulysses' ship, Butch encounters a one-eyed evil grandfather, a 12-year-old Siren, the lotus-eaters of Alabama... and Frank Vaughn. If Butch ever sees his beloved sister, Cindy, again, it'll be a miracle. If he's alive at the end of the summer, it'll be a bigger one. A dark version of "The Wonder Years," Frank Vaughn Killed by his Mom is "The Great Santini" written by Homer, careening through a coarse world of racism, adultery, abandonment, and even the occasional hope.