A woman was coming up the middle of the street. She was short and stocky, and her hair stuck out the sides. She was moving as if she didn't want anyone to get in her way. The kid who was holding on to her was even stranger than she was. He was tall and skinny—real skinny.
"She's something else," Jerry said. "What's her name?"
"Maxine Flooter. The little kids call her the crazy lady."
Maxine Flooter, a.k.a. Crazy Lady, is the neighborhood joke—even Vernon, whose mother has recently died, pokes fun at her as, ranting and scolding, she weaves drunkenly through the streets with her retarded son, Ronald. But when Vernon receives less and less attention from his overworked father, circumstances bring him closer to the outcasts. Slowly he becomes aware that they are real people, not caricatures. In the course of this discovery, he comes to better understand a mother's fierce love for her son, his own loss, and his own strength in the face of that loss.
—from the dust jacket
Increasingly alienated from his widowed father, Vernon joins his friends in ridiculing the neighborhood outcasts Maxine, an alcoholic prone to outrageous behavior, and her retarded son Ronald. But when a social service agency tries to put Ronald into a special home, Vernon fights against the move.
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