The Last Good Summer: A Novel of Boyhood and Consequences

Two boys. One forgotten man. One summer that teaches them kindness has consequences.Mississippi Delta, 1994.For fourteen-year-old Evan Cole and fifteen-year-old Micah Ruiz, summer should mean the river, the skiff, and long days with no schedule except the current.Then a chance encounter outside a convenience store changes everything.The man is Eli Greer, a Gulf War veteran living in an abandoned school bus near the county landfill. Most of the town has learned not to see him. Evan and Micah cannot look away.At first, helping seems simple. A sandwich. A bottle of water. A quiet visit no one else has to know about.But Eli has rules. The town has eyes. And the boys soon discover that compassion can become dangerous when the person they are trying to protect is safest being invisible.As summer deepens, small choices begin to carry weight neither boy knows how to measure. What began as kindness becomes secrecy. What began as friendship becomes a test of courage, restraint, and loyalty.The Last Good Summer is a quiet, haunting coming-of-age novel about boyhood, friendship, moral consequence, and the summer when two boys learn that doing the right thing does not always mean everything turns out right.For readers who enjoy thoughtful, character-driven fiction, Southern atmosphere, book-club discussion novels, and stories about the choices that shape us long after childhood ends.

Pagina's: 177, Paperback, Independently published