Ernest is a typical teenager in mid-eighties suburbia. He wets the bed, has to wear special 'fat kid' pants, he's got zero friends, and is considering suicide. Okay, maybe Ernest isn't exactly typical.
Could Ernest's crushing misery date back to the third grade when his parents secretly changed their 'numerologically inauspicious' last name without even bothering to mention it? Might it be because they restrict him to a neon-colored diet of Better Day Products(TM) shakes made from chemical infused plastics? Or, does Ernest's persistent gloominess possibly stem from those weekly sessions with Dr. Scrapple, an unlicensed therapist who uses him as a guinea pig for his experimental, anti-bedwetting hypnosis techniques?
Certainly, Ernest's problems couldn't have anything to do with the epoch-marauding Incense Pirates, hell-bent on burning him alive as a 'human suffumigation' in an epic time travel ritual. Or could they?
Life takes a radical turn, however, when a mysteriously solemn, weirdly green-eyed girl dripping with amber jewelry shows up at school right before Christmas break, and Ernest's lonely, pathetic existence is transformed forever.
Loosely inspired by author, Kirk Kristlibas's own youth in Rockland County, NY, JURATE'S CASTLE is a phantasmagoric -and often hilarious- journey through erupting 'Kronocanoes, ' Cloak wave makeovers, a lost tribe of Lithuanian shape-shifters, crispy bacon - and ultimately, of self-discovery.
If you don't believe it, just ask the talking cat.