The Everyday Superman is a feel-good, refreshingly alive debut novel. Chad Michael Granier’s unique voice flows with remarkable innocence. You can’t help but fall in love with the young Cajun boy who secretly dreams about saving a world that seems to have conspired against him. Like a modern Dennis the Menace, everything the boy Chad does is misinterpreted. We suffer with him when he is punished for actions meant to please, and laugh with him when he charms old drunks and ladies of all ages with his wit.
It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed an author’s prose as much as Granier’s in The Everyday Superman. He writes with honesty, imagination, and an intrepid force, much like Irvine Welsh in Filth, John Irving in The World According to Garp, or Anthony Burgess in the Clockwork Orange (but without all the violence.) Granier will win you over, and once you finish reading his book, you will want to be his new best friend.
-Kristi Saare Duarte author of The Transmigrant
In The Everyday Superman, Granier invites you into the bayou, opens the door and welcomes you in. Marvelously crafted, and told at the most personal level, he spins a sentimental tale of youth and innocence, experience, and maturity that captures the true essence of growing up, and not just in the Cajun swamps where banjos echo through the cypress, but anywhere children still live and play with the joy of imagination. Full of laughter and tears, the story touches on the times in our lives when truth and justice lay at the forefront of our desires. A throwback to all the times we wish we could have stood for something but were too busy to get involved. But when you’re Superman, anything is possible. The only thing this story is missing is a splash of Tabasco, but you can always order that on the side.
-Michael Oats, author of Wade in the Water and Stones in the Field
“From the very first moment “Jitta” locked eyes with “Bug” across the crowded dance floor, I was swept away and welcomed into the Cajun swamps of the Southern Louisiana Bayou. Spinning a hilarious, gumbo smacking tale of his youth, inner superhero, and his childhood memories of friends and family members, Granier took me back to my own down-home roots and personal secrets I had held onto for over 60 years. The Everyday Superman isn’t just about southern rearing, but it’s every person’s life. That is the gift Granier offers up with every visit into the secret world of his super identity … that we are all born “super” and “special” [in our own way].
The Everyday Superman, A Cajun Boy’s Quest to Fight Evil from the Inside Out is a charming, funny account of youth and coming of age. You will never forget his colorful, quirky characters. I felt that I knew them personally from my childhood––I am sure that you will recognize a few.
Grainer’s debut novel is five star and will most definitely leave you wanting for more. You will laugh your ass off.”
-Forrest Robinson, retired professor/director/producer (Biola University)
We read for escape, and in the pages of ‘The Everyday Superman,’ we do. From the first page, we’re stowaways in southern Louisiana in the 1970’s, draped around the neck of a young Chad Granier like his ‘woobie’ cape, getting an over-the-shoulder view of a life that didn’t fit and a family that was a size or two too tight for this exuberant young superhero. We get to be in on the secret that he’s special, crossing our fingers that somebody else is going to figure it out, too. We run breathlessly from his daddy’s belt and get dizzy from his mamma’s mood swings, but even Chad forgets how hard his extraordinary life can be when he’s caught up in the ‘everyday’ magic he surrounds himself with. It’s a game, and he’s the leader, and somehow, we find ourselves marching along behind this little ‘coon-ass’ Cajun boy; amazed, scared, wide-eyed, and laughing all the way.
-Melodie Henderson Magouirk, Screenwriter
Chad Michael Granier’s memoir, The Everyday Superman, A Cajun Boy’s Quest to Fight Evil from the Inside Out, takes the reader on a journey through his childhood in the bayous of Southern Louisiana and on a quest to become the hero that, at some point, we all knew we’d be. Unlike me, Chad really knew he was special, in every fiber of his tiny being.
The story begins as every hero’s does – with an origin story. The first step of the journey begins as we’re introduced to Chad in his “Ordinary World”. It feels like a disservice to call anything about this book ordinary (even to prove a point) since we get to see this world through the eyes of an exceptionally imaginative boy who makes everything sparkle with his outrageous humor, wit, and “pocketful of confidence”. His energy and enthusiasm make him jump off his momma’s dresser and right off the page. You can just hear the voice of a young feisty boy when you read things like, “But keeping my mouth shut is harder than pretending to like my sister at church.”
After the trials and tribulations, this Ordinary World has served our hero, like his parents’ divorce or the existence of his sister, he receives a devastating blow. They say we see who we really are when we’re at our lowest, and at Chad’s lowest he becomes certain of one thing – he is a superhero. After this “Call to Adventure”, the reader watches the hero stumble as he tries to discover how he can tap into his special powers and experiences the frustrations of a boy who knows he’s destined for greatness but can’t tell anyone about it (because everyone knows a superhero can’t reveal his identity).
This book will transport you back to a time when you believed you were capable of anything. You’ll remember that feeling of invincibility, the belief that you were capable of doing anything as long as you wanted it badly enough, the joy you felt when others saw something special in you, the irritation when people didn’t realize how seriously powerful you were, the way a parent’s words had the power to exalt or crush you, and the disillusionment of your heroes, like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. At times, you’ll be whisked away from Louisiana and Chad will be saving the day on another planet or stopping insects from taking over the world with his cool charisma and kickass skills.
Granier masterfully writes the unfiltered, hyperbolic, (mostly) innocent yet sometimes cruel observations of a child. I found myself constantly laughing out loud. His delightful sense of humor riddled with creative cursing lightens the darker subjects in this book, like when he says, ”My daddy believes in the belt just like he believes in Ford trucks.” The complicated familial relationships interwoven in this story are heart-wrenching, raw, and leave the reader understanding how these people helped him on his way to becoming a “coonass” superhero.
This coming-of-age story is beautifully written. He has a staccato writing style that gives the narrative a conversational feel, and there’s a sense of familiarity that made me feel as though I was listening to the stories of an old friend. If you’re like me and you’ve never been introduced to the Cajun dialect, it can take a few pages to get used to his writing style. Once you’ve got it, you will be fully transported to the bright yellow house in the bayous of Louisiana and into the warm embrace of the child you once were who still expects great things from you.
-Mallory Whitaker