I absolutely love Arizona! I’ve been lucky
enough to visit twice (Phoenix, Tempe, and Scottsdale areas), and would love to
go back and see the Grand Canyon, since I never got a chance to go there. K.S.
Jones paints a vibrant and beautiful picture with her words, that allows me to
feel my skin sizzle under the Arizona heat, and make my mouth water for buttery
cornbread. So what’s my take on a story set in
a place that can conjure up Geronimo’s ghost and make you sweat with every page
you turn? This is what I posted on Amazon and Goodreads…
Lightning does indeed strike twice with this 5 Star Winner!
K.S. Jones combines a mixture of Apache folklore, natural
phenomenon, and science fiction in a dessert setting to create her middle grade
sci-fy adventure about 10 year-old Samuel Baker and his incredible journey into
another dimension. Fast-paced from beginning to end, Jones weaves a fantastic
and emotional tale wrought with love, death, magic, and hope.
Jones’s imaginative story is a must for any bookshelf (or
ereader), and though geared for tween boys, there’s plenty of action to get the
girls cheering for Samuel and his friend Isabelle to get them back home to the
families they love. High fives for K.S. Jones and her electrifying tale!
Tagline and Blurb:
Life moves on — no
matter what...
Following his father’s
puzzling disappearance and his mother’s death, ten-year-old Samuel Baker goes
through the motions of living in a world turned upside down. He wears an Apache
talisman, a long ago gift from his father, in hopes its promise of strength and
guidance is true. But what he truly wants is the power to bring his parents
back.
Heartless Aunt Janis is
elated at the prospect of becoming Samuel’s legal guardian. She is sure an
orphan boy will elicit such an outpouring of public sympathy that her husband
will win his Senate bid by a landslide. But when Grandpa Tate arrives, things
don’t go as expected, especially when black lightning strikes!
Read an Excerpt:
Samuel stood beside his
mother’s rain-speckled casket. He had cried his tears dry, so there was no
point in trying to find more.
“Chin up, young man,”
Aunt Janis said as her fingers nudged Samuel’s jaw upward. “Death is just part
of life, and our photographer needs a good picture of you for the newspapers.”
A camera flashed,
leaving Samuel’s red and swollen eyes burning as if stung by the sun instead of
grief.
So many important days
had come and gone without his father, but surely he would come home today,
wouldn’t he? Samuel closed his eyes. He pretended his father was beside him
holding his hand. They had a right to hold hands, he told himself. Not because
he was ten, but because it was his mother’s funeral. Two years had passed since
his father left, never to be seen again. Vanished, was the word his
mother had used. Into thin air, she’d said.
“Take that silly thing
off.” Aunt Janis flicked Samuel’s wood and bead necklace.
“No,” he said and shook
his head. “My dad gave it to me.” It was a pinewood tile, the size of a domino
shaved nickel-thin, which hung from a leather cord around his neck. Burned onto
the front side of the wood was a lightning bolt. Its flipside bore the
blackened imprint of a tribal dancer. It had a turquoise nugget and a shiny
black hematite bead strung together on each side. His father had given the
talisman to him with a promise: It will guide you and give you strength
when you need it most.
Today, dressed in a
black suit and starchy white shirt, Samuel wore it in hopes the promise was
true.
As mourners gathered,
Samuel’s friend Brian came to stand beside him. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” Samuel answered
without taking his eyes off the casket.
“Is that the necklace
your dad gave you? You don’t usually wear it.” Brian’s wire-rimmed glasses slid
down his straight arrow nose. He pushed them back up the bridge with one finger
until they encircled his eyes again. “Can I see it? I promise I’ll give it
right back.”
“It’s not a necklace.”
Samuel pulled the leather cord off over his head, mussing his overgrown blond
hair. “It’s a talisman.” He handed it to Brian. “My dad said it would help me,
but it hasn’t done anything yet. I think it was just one of his stories. It’s
probably just an old piece of scrap wood with a couple rocks tied to it.”
Brian shrugged after
examining the piece then he handed it back to Samuel. “I think it’s cool. You
should keep wearing it anyway.”
Nodding, Samuel hung the
talisman around his neck again, but this time he dropped it down beneath his
shirt where it was no longer visible. It felt warm against his skin.
“Has anybody told you
where you’re going to live now?” Brian asked.
“Probably with Aunt
Janis and Uncle Jack.”
Brian frowned. He kicked
the tip of his shoe into the muddy soil. “They live so far away. Why can’t you
just stay here and live with Mrs. Abel? She doesn’t have any kids.”
Mrs. Abel was their
fourth grade teacher. She had plainly stated to all who would listen that her
job was to teach the proper use of the English language to children who behaved
properly. A babysitter, she had said, she was not.
Today, she stood in the rain with the other mourners, eyeing the ground where
the hem of her long, gray dress lay caked in mud. Tufts of brown hair jutted
out from under her pink plaid scarf. Even though she stood a few feet from him,
she had not spoken to Samuel since his mother’s death. Few people had. Everyone
had words for Aunt Janis and they talked to Uncle Jack, but no one but Brian
and a few classmates had spoken to him. Maybe talking to an orphan was harder
than talking to a normal kid.
Purchase Links:
Mirror World Publishing
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Meet the Author:
Karen (K.S.) Jones grew up in California, but now lives in the beautiful Texas Hill
Country northwest of San Antonio with her husband, Richard, and their dogs Jack
Black, Libby Loo, and Red Bleu. Black Lightning is her first middle-grade
novel. She credits her love of fantasy to the early influences of authors
J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. Her award-winning first
novel, Shadow of the Hawk, a Young Adult Historical, released in
2015.
Connect with K.S. Jones:
Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/KSJones2011
Loved that book!
ReplyDelete