Put a Nickel on the Drum

For those who lived in the so-called "Dust Bowl," black blizzards of dust rolled across millions of acres of barren wasteland, once lush with buffalo grass and amber waves of grain.

A World War had ended less than two decades before, and the spark for a second one had already been ignited. Conflict raged across the globe. Japan was enslaving Manchuria, Italy was ravaging Ethiopia, and a bloody civil war gripped Spain. 

The Great Depression was wreaking havoc on the economy, and was quickly becoming the catalyst for foreign authoritarian regimes. 

In cities of size, organized crime flourished, giving rise to the nickname, "Dirty Thirties."

Many did not survive this abrasive period of history. This story is about an Oklahoma farm boy who did. One day, Jacob Brewster discovered that he possessed the strength and courage to confront the marauding dust devil that roamed the dry, lifeless fields of his family's farm. At the time, he had no way of knowing that those virtues would later be rested in ways he could never have imagined.

This exciting and thought-provoking coming-of-age tale will delight, surprise, and enlighten even the most avid reader of historic fiction. The author has captured the time and the place in the kind of detail that will pull you to it, and he describes every nuance of the era in a voice which is rich in textual simplicity, yet sophisticated in it's gut-wrenching emotion.  

Robert N. Story is a native mid-westerner who began writing full-length fictional novels late in life. He cut his teeth on magazine articles, and was a prolific contributor to many magazines and websites with his articles on recreational boating safety. An editior of one of those magazines told him that his writing talent should be expanded, suggesting a try at a fiction novel. His first book, "KABA 1330" was a direct result of that advice. It was followed by a second, a dark exploration along the fine line between sanity and madness called, "The Night Poet." "Put a Nickel on the Drum" is his third novel, and one that he describes as his best effort so far. His only regret is that there is "so much more to tell, and so little time left in which to tell it."

"We are strange creatures, we writers of fiction," says the author. "We gaze out across an open field and see things that aren't there. A child, standing ankle-deep in clover, staring off into the distance. And of this vision that only we can see, we ask, "Who are you, where did you come from, and where are you going?" Then we sit down and invent his or her life, and he or she becomes a part of us. It's a wonderful curse.

In "Nickel," the author has created a cast of characters within its 350+ pages that will become a part of you as well. As reviews will attest, "I didn't want to put it down." A cliche perhaps, but in this case, the only reality of this make-believe experience.