Ray Rhamey

The air was as still as it was hot—only the whir of a grasshopper’s flight troubled the quiet. Jesse felt like an overcooked chicken, his meat darn near ready to fall off his bones. Mouth so dry he didn’t have enough spit left to swallow, Jesse croaked, “That guy tryin’ to kill us?” Turns out the answer is “not yet.” A ranch hand is murdered and bad things start happening to Jesse, just an average kid working on a ranch the summer of 1958. And then there‘s Lola . . . the boss’s daughter is a firecracker of a girl, and her bold ways send death their way. It will take all of their heart and courage to survive.

In this coming-of-age story laced with love and murder, the time of innocence is 1958, when society was vastly different from today—no cell phones, no Internet, no AIDS, and no hooking up.

First readers responded to “The Summer Boy” this way:

“’The Summer Boy’ brought back memories of first kisses and fogged car windows.”

“The story is alive. I kept reading even when my eyes were closing at night.”

“Wow . . . the tension never ended and it seemed to come from all directions. I spent the day reading as I couldn't stop.”

Besides a page-turner of a ride, “The Summer Boy’s” window into those times brings a smile of nostalgia to anyone who was a teen in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. And, for younger readers who have a parent or grandparent who was a teenager back then, there’s a sense of what life was like in the early days of rock and roll.

“The Summer Boy” is a novel of Texas, a story about the grit and character of the people of that great state.