Dave has gotten some horrible news from his dad. It seems that his father is going to require him to get a summer job. Everyone knows that the summer when someone is 15 years old is a time when getting a job is optional, but that is proving not to be the case. Some would find the fact that his best friends Victor and Curtis are getting the same requirement from their dads, but that quickly proves to not be the case. The three guys decide that they want to have one last summer to enjoy the sweet life before they fall into a lifetime of employment.

In order to do so, each of the guys agrees to take a job and pretends to interview for and get the job. They then just have to come up with the right get-rich-quick scheme so they can make enough money to prove they worked while leaving most of their time to just sit back and relax.

The novel then falls into a farcical and campy comedy of errors as the boys come up with one scheme after the next only to find it fall totally apart. They try everything from a garage sale (minus one garage) to guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar to treasure hunting and on to even trying to catch bank robbers.

I could easily see this being a wonderful comedy film with lots of physical humor. The storyline definitely relies on a series of coincidences, but the reader is willing to accept them to see just how bad the boy's luck really can get.

Dave, Victor and Curtis, are regular guys just looking to find some easy money and find themselves pulled into the flawed racial history of Tacoma, their city, while also coming to realize that sometimes you just can't get away from work and that work can actually be fun sometimes.

This is a nice light-hearted and fun read for those looking to sit back and just enjoy some time off. I would bet that goal is easier to get for the reader of this book than it was for the three guys starring in it.