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The Great Skinner Getaway
Four Winds Press, 1987 When
Michael Skinner, head of the Skinner clan, leaps to his feet, waving the
newspaper and shouting "I've found it! I've found it!" the
family is pleased but not overwhelmed. They assume he found a nice job - a
nice, normal one. After surviving one nationally publicized strike (The
Great Skinner Strike) and one exhaustingly successful home business (The Great
Skinner Enterprise), the Skinners are glad to be returning to ordinary
middle-class life.
But as readers of the previous Skinner stories
know, the Skinners will never be ordinary middle-class Americans
again. What Michael has found is not a job, but a slightly used
thirty-five-foot motor home, quickly dubbed Brunhilda, the family's
ticket to an out-of-the-ordinary trip across the country to explore the
wilderness, meet real people in small-town America, and take the pulse of the
nation.
Soon the Skinners are off - Michael, Ellie, 15-year-old
Jennie (the official narrator of the Skinner chronicles), Marcia, Rick, a surly,
recalcitrant Ben, one dog, and two cats (one comatose, one hysterical) - all
crammed into Brunhilda's tight quarters, leading life single file on the
high road to adventure. Calamities abound for the disaster-prone
Skinners. The Great Camping Community proves a dud, and small-town America
nearly does the family in. What with exploding appliances, a cat crazed
with blood lust, a diet of wild foods, and unremitting togetherness, their
idyllic vacation more closely resembles a hell on wheels. But the
indefatigable Skinners weather the storms of life - and their own eccentricities
- in fine style in this uproarious domestic comedy.
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