A Tale of Two Boxes

Childhood and adolescence: They were the best of times, they were the worst of times, and some of each are captured in these three intriguing novellas. In Delinquency Lessons, young Wiley Reed is trucked with his family from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky up to Bound Brook, New Jersey where he finds flying slugs and forest fires, trash picking and first kisses, spearing and spear-chucking, before nearly learning one last lesson. The eponymous tale casts a pair of cardboard boxes and a row of pear trees in a bittersweet tale of love and loss for Wiley and his sister Beulah during one memorable Indian summer. In Enzo Januzzi Scores a Double-Header, Wiley's heavyset friend goes to college in the American south and discovers a new world of sacrifice flies and stolen bases, eventually helping the spirited women of the Gibson-Henry softball team to overcome an abusive coach and a provincial campus.