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A Sneak Preview
It’s actually a difficult week for me to do all this because my left hand is out of commission. I’m using it with a brace on it, making so many mistakes hitting wrong keys, I get very frustrated. I’m right handed, so it shouldn’t be such an issue, but I’m amazed to discover how many ordinary functions require my left hand. It seems that my signature and eating are the only things I do with my right hand. Yeh, it’s hard to do all this single-handedly! But, nevertheless, with all the buzz about this book, I decided to give you a sneak preview on my mini blog today, with the brace banging away on the keyboard.
“What is your book about?”
It was an awkward time, an adolescent time, in our nation’s history, those 30s. Not so much is written for YA about that time when the Great Depression straddled the two Great Wars. It wasn’t pretty, maybe boring by comparison, but filled with teeming humanity. It’s in this setting that young Willy, a boy with a secret too big to carry, abandoned by his father, finds himself in the unusual little town of Waitnsee.
An odd mix of people inhabit this town where the train arrives on time several times a day, hobos warm themselves behind the depot, the air smells like bread baking, and folks are all waiting for someone, or something, to make a change, here at the crossroad. Elmer, the legless man on a moveable platform, and Rake, the administrator of the Union Mission, become Willy’s defenders, mentors, and protectors, while the collage of homeless men living at the Mission who he thinks must be the losers of society, become his family. Willy is surprised to learn “Everyone is more than what they don’t have. And everyone is more than what they do have.” Keeping his eyes on the large lighted cross atop the Union Mission building, Willy learns to find his way through town, through life, and back to the door of the Mission.
The travails of being a “colored” boy in middle America in 30s, make up a plot that is both tragic and funny, sad and delightful, enlightening…historically. The ending, a surprise to the author, was just as surprising to Willy. Now, a new adult, his purpose is unveiled to him. This is a change Willy hadn’t thought about, and he will take all his “baggage,” his personal history, his amazing education of life-lessons, along with him. Readers will remember Willy.