Book, by
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
(c) 1945, and currently published by
The University of Nevada Press
This is most definitely the only book in history written to describe the trials, tribulations, childhood, friendships, adolescence, and coming of age of a young man from Reno, Nevada. Contained within its many hundreds of pages (690, in the edition I possess), you will find subtle yet alarmingly accurate descriptions of the sorts of things that happen, even in these modern times, to the young and old alike in Reno. When you finish reading the book, if you make it all the way through, you will have a profound understanding of what it means to be a freak in a small desert town, and why it is that so many of us hailing from said small desert town wish to live out our days there, in relative comfort and obscurity, with the leaves trembling all around us.
Or put another way: This book is my bible.