Showing results for "odyssey" in Coming of Age

The young seeker of Joe Ely's REVERB is the son of "pioneers who came seeking freedom who found so much of it that they couldn't handle it." He lives in Lubbock, Texas, a town that exists in "a normal state of static chaos." It is the so-called Summer of Love and 18-year-old Earle hitchhikes the road and rides the rails with only his guitar. He is on an odyssey to find himself.

Men do not become mystics. They become warriors. But eighteen-year-old Salo has never been good at conforming to his tribe’s expectations. For as long as he can remember, he has loved books and magic in a culture where such things are considered unmanly. Despite it being sacrilege, Salo has worked on a magical device in secret that will awaken his latent magical powers. And when his village is attacked by a cruel enchantress, Salo knows that it is time to take action.

Salo’s queen has finally accepted his desire to be a mystic despite taboos concerning men’s use of magic. But her acceptance is not support; it is strategy. Under a disguise of the queen’s making, Salo enters Jungle City as a pilgrim to the Red Temple, only to find a magical barrier barring his entrance. Left at the mercy of the warring political factions that run the city, Salo faces a series of obstacles wrought by an unseen hand, knowing he cannot return home without completing his pilgrimage. But Isa, King of the Saire clan, has her own plans for Salo.

Follow the adventures of a baby boomer born in 1948 from his birth to high school graduation in 1966. Born in a small South Western Pennsylvania town on the edge of Appalachia, the narrator, in a fictional memoir filled with amusing anecdotes, captures life in an absorbing snapshot of coming of age in the Pennsylvania bituminous coalfields of the 1950s.