Sabbath Creek Book

Sabbath Creek is the story of Lewis Pope, a fourteen-year-old boy thrust into an adult world when his beautiful mother takes him on an aimless journey through south Georgia. Cerebral and sensitive, Lewis is forced to confront the latent fears-scars left from the emotional abuse of an alcoholic father and the lack of comfort from a preoccupied mother- that crowd his interior existence.

At the heart of the journey, and of the novel itself, is Truman Stroud, the quick-witted, cantankerous, ninety-three-year-old black owner of the crumbling Sabbath Creek Motor Court, where Lewis and his mother are stranded by car trouble. Despite his prickly personality and the considerable burden of his own tragedies, Stroud becomes the boy's best hope for a father figure, as he teaches Lewis the secrets of baseball and the secrets of life.

This compassionate, powerful work of fiction travels from the ruined landscape of south Georgia and takes us all the way through the ruined landscape of a broken heart.

The New York Times

This spare, lovely novel, while generous in humor, is anchored by sorrow and interspersed with portents of tragedy. Especially poignant are Lewis's flashbacks to the tense dread of living at the whims of an alcoholic father. ''When he was like that,'' Lewis recalls, ''I didn't know how to stand, how to hold my face.'' Lewis observes everything with the alertness of someone who does not yet take common experiences, such as kissing and drunkenness, for granted; he never resorts to shorthand to convey them, but describes them with a scrupulous fidelity to his own perceptions. — Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow