For The Transcript

Debrah Williamson's "Singing with the Top Down" is a fast-paced, funny novel that accentuates the positives in life and whose characters face the negatives with humor and strength.

Set in 1955, "Singing with the Top Down" focuses on the Teegarden and Mahoney kinfolk, and Williamson's well-drawn characters step off the page and into the reader's heart.

She presents them not as caricatures or ideals but as people who in any era could be our friends, neighbors or even crotchety relatives.

The story opens with the Mahoney family going to a traveling carnival in yet another effort by Johnny Mahoney to cheer up his moody wife, Gracie. Just as the family climbs into the front car of the roller coaster, the family's youngest child, Buddy -- "a skinny, bucktoothed 8-year old with stick-out ears who stuttered" -- has to go to the bathroom and Gracie tells Pauly, his sister, to take him.

Seething with resentment against her mother and brother, Pauly obeys. But while Buddy is in the bathroom, the background noise of carnival excitement changes to screams of terror as the roller coaster cars plunge to earth.

Anxious to find her parents, Pauly rushes toward the roller coaster with Buddy in tow. In her first person account, Pauly recalls that moment: "I stepped on something that rolled under my foot ... my gaze locked on a half-eaten candy apple, the stick still clutched in a pale white hand. Flashing lights glinted off the phony diamond ring on a finger tipped with ... Playgirl Pink ... polish. The color I'd brushed on Mama's right hand ... I'd gone from being an ungrateful daughter to being an unlucky orphan in one eye-blink instant."

As the story unfolds, we learn Gracie and Johnny Mahoney were better at being sweethearts than parents.

Since Gracie experienced frequent and extreme mood swings, Johnny Mahoney expended a great deal of time and energy cajoling his wife out of her moods.

Loners, whether by choice or circumstance, are tough guys, as Pauly Mahoney knows all too well. No one had to tell Pauly that "the extra-large, economy-sized chip" on her shoulder was her greatest flaw.

But what else could the 13-year old self-appointed family worrier do? No one else could handle the job. "Worrying gave Mama a sick headache and sent Pop off to the pool hall."

From Pauly's perspective someone in the family had to be responsible. Even so, she often wished and hoped for something better. "When I saw a shooting star or yanked on a pulley bone, I always made the same wish: Please let Johnny and Gracie Mahoney act more like parents in movies."

Fortunately for Pauly and Buddy Mahoney, in the pool of pompous, petty and selfish relatives they found a beacon of hope in their mother's younger sister, Nora, who lived in California and worked in the movies.

Their chain-smoking aunt's joie de vivre attitude was contagious. Not only was she willing to open her heart and home to raise her sister's children, but she was the ideal person to teach them that even after the tragic loss of their parents there was always reason for hope.

Nora felt she and the children needed time to adjust. Her plan was to drive to California in her 1953 Buick Skylark convertible and make the trip a vacation -- a time for getting to know each other, seeing the county, camping and singing whenever the spirit moved them.

Somewhere between Amarillo and Tucumcari, the warm-hearted Nora picks up two hot and weary hitchhikers -- Tybalt Bisbee, a man about 70, and his dog named Puppy.

As the five traveling companions head west, Nora and Pauly find that they have a knack for getting into mischief which leads them from one crazy adventure to another -- including the 500-year-old mummy caper, a hospital breakout and their terrifying encounter with a couple of unsavory characters.

Readers of all ages will find Pauly Mahoney's first-person account of her and Buddy's life a touching and entertaining tale.

The story is peppered with spot-on observations befitting an intelligent, opinionated and sassy child ("Elders were a bunch of raisin-hearted old poops fermenting in their own bitter juice."), as well as a cynical adult-like view of life forced on a child by fate (" ... the only security in the world was whatever security you could create for yourself ... You quit being a child when you stop counting on other people and start counting on yourself"). In the end, the book affirms that past or present, most folks tend to be selfish -- but there are exceptions when we need them.

A wonderful gift for the young and the young-at-heart, look for "Singing with the Top Down" on Amazon or ask for it at your favorite bookstore.

Debrah Williamson is the author or co-author of nearly 30 novels. A native of Oklahoma, she teaches professional writing at the University of Oklahoma.