Evison is one of the sharpest writers around, and proves it in pretty much every line of this funny, brassy, unflinching tale of a broken boy and his equally broken caregiver.

Susan Faludi’s dissection of the national id is even almost funny in a twisted, cringe-and-shiver way, until you remember just how much death and ruination have come of America’s years-long wallow in “Hollywood heroism.”