Walking Dunes - Hardcover

Teenagers in small-town Texas in the late 1950's: it sounds like a retake on The Last Picture Show, but Scofield (Gringa, 1988; Beyond Deserving, 1991) manages to make this darkly compelling novel all her own. Basin, Texas, is where 18-year-old David Puckett has lived his whole life. His mother Marge works in a mental hospital. His father Saul is an embittered Jewish tailor from New York who abandoned the family for years, returning when David was 13. Saul and Marge spend their time together drinking and arguing. David knows in his bones that his father will leave again someday, and the teenager dreams of his own way out, probably in the form of a tennis scholarship to college. Through tennis, David has been befriended by some of the country club crowd, notably the Kimbrough family, whose daughter, Beth Ann, voted Most Beautiful in the senior class, seems to have her eye on him. But there are others with claims on David as well- -his steady girlfriend, cheerleader Glee; prickly intellectual Patsy Randall, his costar in the school play; and spacey Sissy, the troubled girl he met at his mother's hospital. When two tragedies shake the town, causing David to lose the camaraderie and support of both his best friends, he feels almost pulled apart by the choices he has to make. Finding a way out and, more importantly, picking the right path, is trickier and more heartbreaking than he ever dreamed. The novel's end is powerful and probably inevitable, but disappointing nonetheless. Scofield wins us over completely with David, a strong, smart,just-flawed-enough character, and we can't help wishing him a better fate. Coming-of-age, served up Texas-style. Plenty potent, it could bring tears to your eyes. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Basin, in West Texas, is the setting of Scofield's impressive third novel, following the American Book Award-winning, NBA nominee Beyond Deserving . Here she draws a finely etched, sensitive portrait of an intelligent, imaginative but flawed young man coming of age under difficult circumstances. David Puckett is desperate to get through his senior year in high school and escape Basin forever. Aware of the social abyss that divides him from the country club set he encounters on the tennis tournament circuit, David becomes even more dissatisfied with his bickering parents--his sour, acerbic father, who has abandoned the family once before and will again, and his exhausted, slatternly mother. As he blunders his way through relationships with four young women, David discovers different aspects of his own nature and makes ethical choices that determine his future. In the end he sacrifices his better instincts for expediency, and breaks his own heart. Scofield's subtly nuanced portrayal of the awkwardness, confusion and inchoate desires of adolescence is remarkable for its balance, insight and cumulative power. She describes the West Texas weather and social climate with the same keen observation that distinguishes her depiction of character. Paperback rights to Plume/Avon.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.