Gullible's Journey - P C Shumway - Bog

In a blend of Historical Fiction and Magic Realism, ten-year-old Patrick Gullible meets a reincarnated Zen master during the spring of 1969 who teaches him to meditate and assigns him the koan: "What is the most valuable thing in the world?" Patrick's solution to the Zen problem is priceless. The fifth grader is dragged out of class by his teacher for telling the other students about Lemuel Gulliver peeing on the Lilliputian palace to put out a fire in Gulliver's Travels. He wonders why a man, dressed in black and carrying a bazooka, stole into the abandoned house. Is that a grave he was digging in the side yard? Patrick is perilously stranded on a raft during a raging flood. The raft breaks apart, so he clings to an empty DDT drum to stay afloat, but soon loses his grip. He comes face to face with the skull and crossbones stenciled on the side of the drum as the swift current pulls it out of his hands...