John Wesley Hardin is the smartest kid in Caledonia, but his high I.Q. can't always keep his dream world separate from the real world. Named after an outlaw by a mother with the attention span of a hummingbird, John is different from other children. He memorizes the Periodic Table of the Elements in four days just because he can. People call him a genius, and he believes them, because he can't think of any evidence to the contrary. John's chronic overconfidence upsets the balance between risk and reward in his decision-making. Believing that he can rescue his father's hardware store from failure, he makes huge bets that threaten to ruin him and his family financially. Each brush with disaster emboldens him to take on even greater risks. His vestiges of infantile omnipotence fall just short of pathological grandiosity. His obsessive nature and good intentions muddle the distinction between right and wrong; he rationalizes committing one fraud after another. When his fundamental identity is exposed as a fiction, his confidence is shattered. He must choose between pride and humility, between self-reliance and dependence on others. His reward for making the right choice is the chance to redeem himself as a young man capable of loving and worthy of being loved.
