First Pages – The Boy from Willow Bend

Dead End.         

“It come at midnight.  Big an’ fat an’ looking for likkle children to eat.  So it can
get fatter.  Suck dem right out of their house if they happen to look out wrong time.
Midnight is when it come…”
He made a disgusting sucking noise, a noise only eight-year-old boys can make.
Silence as the story sank in.  Silence as they felt the deepening darkness.  Then
Kim sucked her teeth, in a way only nine-year-old girls can, breaking the spell.
“Vere, you so lie!”
He opened his mouth to respond.
Then,
“Vere!”
It was Tanty’s voice, coming from further down the alley.
He crawled out from under the house on bony hands and skinned knees and
hightailed it down the alley.  His soles were used to the hard earth and stones of the
nowhere-going dirt road.
Funny, it hadn’t seemed this dark under the Buckley house, in the company of
Kim and Kendall Buckley.  Now, he couldn’t even see the fall of his feet, taking him
home, and he felt more than saw the willow trees reaching up and bending over all
around him.  He ran faster.
Tanty was waiting on the gallery.
“Vere Joseph Carmino, why you won’t take telling?  I tell you make sure you find yourself home before night fall an’ every night you come running down the road after dark like some devil chasin’ you….Read more of The Boy from Willow Bend.  (click text to go to the books page; image to go to The Boy from Willow Bend‘s review page, here to go to the Study Guide, AND click here  for the launch gallery). The Boy from Willow Bend is on schools reading lists in Antigua and Barbuda and Anguilla.

Other First Pages:
The Jungle Outside
With Grace
Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure and (Spanish language edition Perdida! Una Aventura en el Mar Caribe)
Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary Edition and Other Stories
Musical Youth
Oh Gad!