Along Country Roads

"HOMEMADE ICE CREAM" said one reviewer of the Summers Run Series, adding, "there's a little Norman Rockwell" mixed in a baseball book that's not a sports story.

Yes, it's about farm boys and their Little League team, but The Boys of Summers Run, follows Claude and his friends through the more serious lessons from life and loss while they "build their dreams from grass and sand."

After the death of his father, Major Blake Kinkade, in Kuwait, Claude Kinkade and his mother, Daisy, arrive with their hopes teetering at the Kinkade's National Historic Farm, Shadeland. Here Claude traces the footsteps left by his departed father and senses Blake's shadow following him.

While Claude's loyalty is spreading its cloak over Shadeland and his father's family, his mother's aglow with a new marriage proposal and a career move to Las Vegas.

Must Claude move as well? Will he lose the grounding he so yearns to embrace while working the fields and meadows of Summers Run?

("Runs" in rural Pennsylvania are those creeks and brooks lacing the countryside together. This is the story of one, Summers Run, where its ancient waters extend deep into the bedrock of the neighborhood. The Summers and Kinkade families have been united along its banks for generations, extending back into the 1790s.)

Then enters Nathean Summers, Claude's second cousin, recently returned to the community from a film and television career.

Nathe rocketed to stardom in the 1960s, then faded when typecast as "too country, too wholesome." He becomes not only the coach of the Panthers Little League team but a father figure for Claude, the newly-minted farm boy. Claude finds Nathean so nearly the mirror image of Major Blake Kinkade, he's inspired to matchmake Daisy and Nathe. His efforts seem destined to fail.

The Pickett Township Panthers suffer an aborted 1992 season. In 1993, they blossom. They challenge more seasoned teams and veteran coaches en route to regional championships. In Nevada, Claude begins playing baseball under the shadow of his mother's shaky marriage. His experience there echoes Nathean's observation: "It's not always your friends, Claude, who become your best teachers."

While life and baseball in Las Vegas take a bitter turn, Claude heeds Nathe's advice and adds their memories to his sense of balance. He returns to Summers Run and reunites with his old teammates. "It's summer," he tells us, "and I feel my stride matching that of my tallest shadow." Claude and his friends grow; sometimes within an afternoon.

The Boys of Summers Run follows Claude's search for his father. Together with the other fatherless boys of the neighborhood--Tim, Aaron, Kevin, and Jeff--they negotiate the terrain their fate defines. Told from a perspective of two decades later, The Boys of Summers Run describes the journey between boyhood and manhood. In essence:

"The pure joy of being a boy," says Uncle Albert, one of Claude's mentors, "it doesn't last long."

Along the back roads of Summers Run, the reader encounters Tim, the deaf orphan who plays center field for the Panthers; P. M. Murphy, the reluctant recluse; and Standing Ovation, the black Angus bull and official mascot of the team. It too travels with the Panthers as they reach for the sunbeams shining on their field of dreams.

The Premise? "The folklore of friendship suggests we may never find another chum, buddy, or pal like the one we were blessed with at age twelve. Tim was mine."

James Cotton has been describing farm life since the early 1970’s as a farm newspaper editor and commentator. He became the editor and assistant publisher of the Simmental Shield, a national magazine devoted to a Swiss breed of beef cattle in the 1980s. In 1986, he became editor of the Angus Journal, a monthly magazine serving the Aberdeen-Angus industry. In the 90’s, he pursued his interest in cover photography and feature writing for national livestock and horse magazines as a free-lancer. He is a graduate of Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, and a Vietnam veteran. Cotton and his wife had four sons and two grandchildren. Jim divides his time between Montana and Pennsylvania, blogs at http: //summersrun.blogspot.com and maintains a website at www.alongcountryroads.com.