Night Fires

George Edward Stanley has written a powerful novel for teens...Night Fires.   Here's the blurb from the back cover...

"After Woodrow Harper's father is killed in an automobile accident, he and his mother move to his father's hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma, to start a new life.  Perhaps here he will be able to feel close to his father in a way that eluded him when his father was alive.  Instead, in his new next-door neighbor, Senator Crawford, Woodrow finds both a father figure who shares Woodrow's interests and understands him in a way his own father never did, and a respected member of the community who will help him find friends in his new home.  But in 1923 there are ugly secrets beneath the surface in Lawton, and the senator is at the heart of them.  Woodrow's need to belong leads him to desperate choices that force him to betray everything his father believed in."

Character development didn't go as I had predicted...Woodrow acts like a desperate teenager who wants attention from a father-figure so bad he'll do anything to please him.  The adults in this novel don't always make the best choices and I like how raw and realistic the characters are written.  Although I wish the plot had been developed a little more, I understand what Stanley is doing with the ending.  Racial relations and the Ku Klux Klan were a problem for the United States for many years to come...

I know I'll have teachers fighting to lead the discussion for this book at our Fall Book Frenzy.  Of the books I've read thus far, this is my ultimate favorite book for that event.  One of the best books for a book club I've read in years!  Great for adults too!

This makes book #28 for me so far!  100 here I come!

Happy Reading!

RC