Some of Tim's Stories
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
From the author of The Outsiders: "Immediate and gripping" tales of two boys whose lives diverge in dramatic ways after a shared childhood tragedy (School Library Journal).
Terry and Mike were cousins who were as close as cousins could be—more like twin brothers, really. They thought they were invincible and that the happy times would last forever, until the day their fathers headed off for their annual deer-hunting trip. That was when everything started to change, and their paths went in very different directions.
Years later, another fateful event will send one of them to prison—and the other to a bartending job in Oklahoma—while the prospect of an eventual reunion looms . . .
From the award-winning author of That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish, "Some of Tim's Stories is a compact set of vignettes" full of "sharp, concise observation" (The New York Times).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Author of the 1967 YA bestseller The Outsiders and its sequels, several children's books and the adult novel Hawkes Harbor (2004), Hinton offers a thin collection of 14 connected short-short stories that explore the divergent lives of two close cousins whose fathers are killed in car accident when the boys are adolescents. When the cousins are both 25, a drug deal goes wrong: Terry is imprisoned, while Mike gets away, living a fugitive life in Oklahoma as a bartender and bouncer. The tales move back and forth in time: "The Sweetest Sound" describes nine-year-old Mike's being awakened during the night when his father, a war vet, cries out in his sleep; while "Full Moon Birthday" finds the boys sharing Mike's first legal drink and a friendly older woman. Later stories delve into Mike's dead-end, often dangerous job at the bar, and his attempt at striking up a friendship with his pretty adult-ed instructor. Finally, Terry gets out of prison to a tense homecoming. Hinton is clearly aiming for terse, but what's here feels bare bones; interviews with the author take up more space than these plainspoken tales.
