Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Coming of Age

It is impossible to be unaware of the effect of development, invariably at the hands of outsiders, upon the lands, inhabitants and very nature of faraway climes. Hunter School shows us first-hand the immediate and long-reaching effects of such changes upon an indigenous people. The fabric of the community is changed, its balance and its self-sufficiency undermined, and confusion reigns. A common theme running throughout this charming but important book is that of a young man learning about himself and his heritage from the past, elders, ancestors, and nature itself.

Cass County, Illinois, 1858. Nine-year-old Scrump Armstrong’s days are centered around his tight-knit family. But after stumbling across a Black man lynched on their property, the youngster’s world changes forever. And as his parents join the Underground Railroad, he fears suspicious neighbors could uncover their dangerous secret. Idolizing his older brother, Scrump is terrified when the nineteen-year-old is suddenly accused of killing their neighbor…a conviction that surely ends in hanging.

Just as the lovely Alvina Houghton comes of age, her widowed father’s business starts to dry up. In a drastic effort to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s standing in society, James Houghton buys, of all things, a theater. Her father’s plans and dreams go misunderstood in the town, but the theater itself does quite well...for a time. One of the traveling players employed at the theater, a sensual Italian man named Ciccio, catches Alvina’s eye, and she finds herself intensely attracted to him.

It’s the late 1980s, and Matthew Carnap is awake most nights, afflicted by a potent combination of insomnia and undiagnosed ADHD. Sometimes he gazes out his bedroom window into the dark; sometimes he wanders the streets of his small Southern Minnesota town. But more often than not, he crosses the hall into his stepfather Russ’ roller rink to spend the sleepless hours lost in music. Russ’s record collection is as eclectic as it is extensive, and he and Matthew bond over discovering new tunes and spinning perfect skate mixes. Then Matthew’s mother divorces Russ.

After the tragic death of her parents when she was just four years old, Raqi is sent to live with her uncle Dodge in Escondido, California. Taking after her Mexican father, Raqi immediately faces hostility from the members of Dodge’s all-White, one-percenter motorcycle club, the Lawless, and from her uncle himself. Being raised by a drug addict is no picnic, and Raqi must quickly learn how to survive. She manages to form a few friendships. Still, as soon as she can, she leaves the violence and bigotry behind and doesn’t look back.

Eve Mann arrives in Ideal, Georgia, in 1972 looking for answers about the mother who died giving her life. A mother named Mercy. A mother who for all of Eve’s 22 years has been a mystery and a quest. Eve’s search for her mother, and the father she never knew, is a mission to discover her identity, her name, her people, and her home. Eve’s questions and longing launch a multigenerational story that sprawls back to the turn of the 20th century.

Bombs fall over a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There she tells them about another war - when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, she recounts how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat, and homesickness, and how the opponents meet - army against army, man against man. Helmets are cleaved, heads fly, blood flows. And everything had begun when Prince Paris of Troy fell in love with king of Sparta Menelaus's wife, the beautiful Helen, and escaped with her to his homeland.

Ireland. County Wexford, 1951. A father and son go swimming in the sea. The waves crash. The wind rises. Only one comes back - Colin, aged six. His mother, Eileen, runs to seek help, but this is a tragedy that will haunt them forever. Colin won't speak a word. He is mute and struggling to cope. But Eileen can see he has a talent for painting. She shows him his father's artwork and gives him a print of a Paul Henry landscape, and slowly, with her encouragement, he begins to follow his dream.

After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, 16-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the 20th century. Caleb’s moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.

At 19, almost 20, Ron Bancroft is newly out as transgender and finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, and unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that - even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender - he can live as a man. A real man. In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, and a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence.

Sixteen-year-old James and his little brother, Danny, live in Crystal Springs, Louisiana, with their grandmother, mother, and first cousin, Lila. The family is working class, proud, strict, and church-going. When a big, clumsy boy named Gabriel moves up the street with his minuscule and mysterious "auntie" James has a new friend who he loves and hates in equal measure.

Amanda Baron died in a boating accident on the Ohio River in 1953. Or did she? While it was generally accepted that she had died when a coal barge rammed the pleasure boat she was sharing with her lover, her body was never found. Travis Baron was an infant when his mother disappeared. After the accident and the subsequent publicity, Travis’ father scoured the house of all evidence that Amanda Baron had ever lived, and her name was never to be uttered around him. Now in high school, Travis yearns to know more about his mother.

Evolutionary biologist Amina Abdul accepts a post-doc in Washington, DC, choosing her career studying hybrid zones over a faltering West Coast romance. Her brother and sister-in-law welcome her to the city, but their marriage is crumbling, and they soon rely on her to keep their son company. Omar, hungry to understand his cultural roots, fakes an Indian accent, invents a royal past, and peppers his aunt with questions about their cultural heritage. When he brings an ornamental knife to school, his expulsion triggers a downward spiral for his family.

Howard Norman’s The Bird Artist, the first book of his Canadian trilogy, begins in 1911. Its narrator, Fabian Vas, is a bird artist: he draws and paints the birds of Witless Bay, his remote Newfoundland coastal village home. In the first paragraph of his tale, Fabian reveals that he has murdered the village lighthouse keeper, Botho August. Later, he confesses who and what drove him to his crime—a measured, profoundly engrossing story of passion, betrayal, guilt, and redemption between men and women. The Bird Artist is a 1994 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticut’s renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher, he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.

On a university campus in rural Qixian, Lin and Liz make an improbable pair: Lin, a Chinese student closer to her menagerie of pets than to her peers, and Liz, a Chinese American teacher grieving her mother’s sudden death. They’re each met with hostility—Lin by her classmates, who mock her for dating a white foreigner; Liz by her fellow English teachers, who exploit their privilege—and forge an unlikely friendship. After a startling betrayal that results in Lin’s expulsion, they swap places. Lin becomes convinced to pursue her degree at a community college near Liz’s Ohio hometown.

Dee Blum has a plan. Or rather, her parents do. Graduate college. Go to law school. Become a divorce attorney. Be “successful.” But Dee wants more—more purpose, more passion, more than checking off someone else’s boxes. A surprise gig leading eco-tours of ethical coffee farms in Costa Rica offers a fresh start.

Promise and her best friend Mouse have fled Newark and are hiding out in New York City, wanted by the police—and the streets—for the death of B-Stone, leader of the Bloods. In the city, Promise has found work as a waitress at a hole-in-the-wall strip club. But one fateful night, she is forced to face her past when an up-and-coming rapper draws several shady characters into her orbit. Meanwhile, Asher has maneuvered himself into a position of great importance after B-Stone’s death, albeit with some help.

This novella tells the story of a ten-year-old Black boy named Pictorial Review “Pic” Jackson, who lives with his grandfather in North Carolina in the 1940s. After his grandfather dies and Pic is living with another relative, his older brother, Slim, shows up to take him out of that dysfunctional home, and they journey from the rural South to New York City. They head for Harlem, where Slim lives with his girlfriend and where Pic sees firsthand the economic hard times his brother is experiencing. After losing job after job, Slim sends his pregnant girlfriend off to San Francisco.

Ramón López was born along the US–Mexico border but is determined to get out and embrace the American dream—and he’s not sure whether his complicated family is a help or a hindrance. As the son of immigrants, as Ramón grows, his admiration for his entrepreneurial father sours as he watches his dad’s dreams of success wither on the vine. Ramón’s mother is constantly preoccupied with his younger brother, who struggles with intellectual disabilities. And the outside world is rife with danger and temptations threatening to distract Ramón from his dreams of making it to New York.