Freaky Deaky Summary
Elmore Leonard

Freaky Deaky Summary

The search for identity and one's proper place in society is the primary thematic focus of Freaky Deaky and is developed in different ways through the varied characters. Skip Gibbs, "a thirty-eight-year-old-kid," is a ponytailed, bearded demolition expert whose twenty-year odyssey (with time out for a prison term) has taken him from coast to coast and to Europe. But at the end of the novel he still is searching, and his final thought is that he is "too old for this." Robin Abbott, his compatriot and former lover, also remains torn at age thirty-seven between the stable and affluent world of her parents and the revolutionary society of her college days. Symbolic of her continuing identity crisis is the escapist romantic fiction she writes under a pseudonym. Mark Ricks cannot fully establish his own identity because he is financially dependent on his brother and must do his bidding...

(read more from the Short Guide)