Sawdust And Smoke

When his folks move from Buck's Landing to the house on Prairie Creek, fifteen year-old Billy Barnes finds his life has changed in unexpected ways. His new friend Pepper tells him about an abandoned lumber camp nearby and about Roscoe Stapp, the mill owner who vanished years earlier. The "ghost town" is filled with interesting things, a magnet for the curious boys who can't stay away, despite the "No Trespassing" sign that's too big to miss and a crazy caretaker who packs a shotgun. Riding the bus to school every day, Billy meets Sorrel, the girl who makes his heart flutter and ties his tongue in knots. Billy wishes he were more like Pepper, who claims to know everything about everything, including girls. But Billy's not so sure he believes all that Pepper says. Poking around the old mill, the boys find themselves in danger when they stumble onto clues to Roscoe's disappearance. When Billy tells Sorrel what he's learned, she worries about what might happen, but the reckless Pepper isn't afraid of trouble.****It is 1953. Billy Barnes is 15, young enough to see the adult world as a mystery and old enough to want to fix its not-so-straight-up foibles. He's not too young to fall in love, not too old to run afoul of danger. His moral compass points the way though he takes a detour or so getting to his goal. Likely, he'll marry lthe girl on the bus, if he stays alive long enough. Probably, he'll solve a decades-old disapperance/murder at the old logging camp up the road, a place almost as powerful a magnet as a smile Sorrell. And, hopefully, he'll carry into adulthood that native righteousness that guides him through close calls with 16-wheelers, scrapes with rangey friends, and encounters with ex-cons. The grown-up world could use some of that.Billy Barnes' tale is a California coming-of-age story as sweet and as astonishing as an English Oliver Twist's and just as heart-pounding and gut wrenching as can be, teetering on the brink childhood, looking ascance into the depths of the adult world.

• | Author: Bruce Coyle|Tim Jollymore
• | Publisher: Finns Way Books
• | Publication Date: Apr 24, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 284 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0991476344
• | ISBN-13: 9780991476343