Nates nervous mother chews gum at warp speed and has a bob that resembles Darth Vaders helmet. His icy father dabbles part-time in the death trade at a funeral home after working for a decade in the insurance racket. His older sister Holly is always lurking in the shadows or away at school. Nate, a creative, messy, and anxious teen, has chosen Randy Savage as his hero. As he finishes high school, the world to which Savage belongs is quickly waning in popularity, and Nate begins to seethe wrestlers downfall mirrored in his own life. But not until the family dismantles for good in 1994 does Nates life truly begin to fracture. Savage 1986-2011 chronicles the middle-class implosion of Nates nuclear family, bracketed by July 1986 when he first saw Randy Savage in person and the wrestlers sudden death in May 2011. When Savage dies, Nate is freed from beliefsonce a source of beauty and escapethat had come to constrict him, fusing him to a moribund past The novel is about the blurred lines between child and adult roles and the ever-changing landscape of interior heroism. Whether dealing with a familys economic turbulence, the scarring effects of teenage love, or creating a new family order, Moore revisits, remasters, and repackages a twenty-five year family odyssey with guts, honesty, and love.
