Blurb:
A sweeping, coming of age love story set in the Pacific Northwest on the brink of WWII. Rejected by classmate and accomplished swing dancer Sally Springs, high school quarterback Raleigh Starr remains desperate to win her heart. While walking home on Thompson Road, Raleigh catches sight of Mona Garrison, dancing at her bedroom window. He is mesmerized. Still determined to dazzle Sally, Raleigh asks the shy sixteen year old to compete with him at the state fair swing dance contest, and she agrees. Swept up in the war, Raleigh realizes too late what Mona has always known: that they are perfect for each other… but he is unware of the terrible price she has paid for his attention. Thompson Road is a poignant, tender story that reminds us of the power of first love.
This is a coming of age love story set in the Pacific Northwest on the brink of World War II. The protagonists are Raleigh Starr and Mona Garrison, who live six miles apart on the same country road in Thurston County, WA. Mona has what we know of today as severe dyslexia.
BACK COVER :
A sweeping, coming of age romance set in the Pacific Northwest on the brink of WWII. Rejected by classmate and talented swing dancer Sally Springs, high school quarterback Raleigh Starr remains desperate to win her heart. While walking home on Thompson Road, he catches sight of Mona Garrison dancing at her bedroom window. He is mesmerized.
Determined to dazzle Sally, Raleigh convinces the shy sixteen year old to compete with him in a swing dance contest. After he is swept up in the war, Raleigh realizes too late what Mona has always known: that they are perfect for each other…but he is unaware of the terrible price she has paid for his attention. Thompson Road is a poignant, tender story that reminds us of the power of first love.
SCOTT WYATT IS THE AUTHOR OF THREE NOVELS: Beyond the Sand Creek Bridge, Dimension M, and Thompson Road. A graduate of Stanford University and the University of Washington Law School, he is an attorney and social activist as well as a fiction and nonfiction writer. He and his wife Rochelle have four children and six grandchildren, and live in Washington State. Find him on Facebook at Scott Wyatt, Author, on Twitter @swyattauthor, and on his website.
…Waves of irrepressible sound, the band in full swing, animated his strides. When he reached the turn in the road, he stopped. The drive was empty—no cars, front or back. The Garrisons’ Pontiac was missing from the carport. Lights glowed in the house, and over the front yard fell the shadow of someone moving inside, a shadow stretching to the road.
A body, dancing wildly, dramatically. Raleigh moved to the far side of the road. With the fast, driving rhythm flowing from the open upstairs window, he inched forward into the light and stopped. Visible through the small sash window above the porch roof was Mona Garrison, moving back and forth, in and out of view, her bare arms swinging, her lithe body twisting. She wore a sleeveless pale pink nightgown. With her dark brown hair flying from one side to the other, she kept the rhythm fully at her command. Raleigh was mesmerized. Her shoulders dipped, first one way, then another, and with her head held high—her chin high—she moved like nothing or no one he had ever seen before. She leaned forward and spun a complete circle, not once but twice, and came back to center, driving her bare shoulders down with the beat—left, right, left, right. Her thin nightgown could not hide the shadowy points of her hips and her breasts, stretching tight the loose-fitting material one moment, disappearing the next.
Raleigh found himself hoping the music would never stop. His breathing was shallow. Nothing mattered so much as this rhythm—hers. Whenever she moved in either direction and became partially cut off from view by the window frame, he felt a spike of yearning.
Come back. Don’t disappear.
A bright yellow light from an unseen lamp revealed a sheen of perspiration over her face, and strands of hair clung to her forehead and cheeks. She pouted, deep in thought. Her blue eyes seemed to avoid the window for the most part, and held no obvious joy. And yet her dancing was frenetic, full bore, tireless, driven. She consumed the pulsing sensations as much as danced to them. The instruments were alive in her limbs, in her hips. She was theirs; they were hers.
When the music stopped, the figure disappeared.
No!
A few seconds later, a scratched recording started. Raleigh’s heart rose with expectant joy, to be dashed again when the needle was lifted off the record and all was silent.
“Let’s try that again, folks,” came a deep male voice. Raleigh recognized Warren Ames, the Friday night master of ceremonies on KMO radio. In the full embrace of more papery static came Pee Wee Hunt’s High Society.
The sharp, unrelenting drumbeat gave Raleigh reason to hope. What he saw first was Mona’s dancing shadow on the opposite wall. He struggled to make out her form, but even this, he thought, was a vision. She drifted partially into view. Here she was, not her shadow. Those serious eyes. The body in fluid motion. She moved slowly out of view—arms straight down one moment, akimbo the next, shoulders rolling in perfect time to the beat.
Raleigh stepped to the right, hoping to regain the vision, but had to content himself with the bobbing shadow that crawled across the golden-papered wall at the back of the room. “Good God,” he muttered. “How did she learn to dance like that?”
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