This unusual novel looks back on boyhood in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1930s. Young Jackie Duluoz roams the town, its river and its streets, shaped by Catholic faith, family and the shadows of childhood fear. Memory blends with dream and fantasy as he imagines a mysterious figure, Doctor Sax, and a battle against a great serpent of evil. Part realistic recollection, part pulp-style myth, the book shows Kerouac at his most imaginative. It is a vivid tribute to the place he came from and to the inner world of a sensitive child.