Amos and Ike is a fast-paced, humorous tale of friendship, discovery, and of how much we need one another
Amos is a handyman who can fix anything in life except himself. He is thirty-two years old and back in the town he grew up in after eighteen months in prison and eight long years on the road. Ike Barnes is a seventeen-year-old wrestling with his father's death, delayed puberty, and a bad attitude. His mother can't handle him, so she ships him off to a suburb of Chicago where a good friend has offered to take care of Ike by having him work with Amos-their caretaker-for the summer. This appears to be a good idea on paper, but Amos is opposed to babysitting this kid-he has enough on his plate getting his life back on track; and Ike, too, balks at washing windows and cleaning pools-he's a musician, not a flunky monkey.
Mixed together, Amos and Ike are nitroglycerin, and they soon discover their chemical reaction is indeed explosive (in a good way) as they help each other with redemption, rebellion, and finding love-one old and one new.