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978-0-9708972-7-5
0-9708972-7-8
$21.95
hardcover
6 x 9
256 pages
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For
11-year-old David Lear, there is nobody quite like his mother. She can
be so caring, so warm and funny, but there are times when her drinking
sweeps her away and her affection gives way to verbal abuse and
sometimes even violence. As her moods grow darker and more intense,
David tries several times to run away from home, before he is finally
sent away to boarding school.
At
the beginning, it's an odd and unfamiliar place, an exclusive prep
school in the New England hills, where the rules seem oppressive and
hard for a boy to understand. David struggles to adjust and to find
friends who will accept him despite the vestiges of an old physical
handicap that still haunt him.
With
elegant prose and a deep and personal understanding of the story,
award-winning poet Anthony S. Abbott offers us his debut novel, a
coming-of-age odyssey that novelist Jill McCorkle calls "a
beautiful story, a story of hope."
As
David slowly finds his footing at school, he must also contend with the
legacy of his family. He sets out alone on a summertime journey in
search of a father he hasn't seen in many years, a stepmother who
loathes him, and a mysterious benefactress who pays for his schooling.
Yet the most powerful and problematic character he must deal with is his
mother, Maggie Hope, whose life has long since slipped from its
moorings.
For
David, the question is whether something similar will happen to him or
whether he will manage, as he becomes a young man, to overcome his
family's history of tragedy and find the strength to make his way in the
world.
about the author
Anthony S. Abbott is a
native of San Francisco who received his undergraduate degree from
Princeton University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. The former
chairman of the Department of English at Davidson College, he is the
author of three books of poetry, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat,
A Small Thing Like a Breath, and The Search for Wonder in the
Cradle of the World. This is his first novel.
Abbott lives in Davidson, North Carolina. |
