Steel Walls and Dirt Drops (42 page)

PRAISE FOR OTHER BOOKS BY ALAN BLACK

METAL BOXES

The best of new space adventure!

One of the best books of the new breed of scifi writers. Have been a fan of space adventures for the past 40 years and this is by far one of the top ten reads! I cannot remember such a fun and memorable read…thank you!

By FD Chandler, January 4, 2014

Very good book

Great action. Fine characters. Rollicking adventure and great humor. Don't miss this one! I look forward to more from this writer.

By
James P. Ruff, Jr.
(Altos de Yerba Buena, San Jorge III, Casa 8,
Chia, Cundinamarca, Colombia, South America), December 12, 2013

Great read, could not put it down!

A very riveting book! I could not put it down. The anticipation to see what was going to happen next was awesome. Great technical detail along with enjoyable entertainment. The story was easy to follow along with as well as having great detail and intrigue
…

By
Larry Wright
, November 18, 2013

CHEWING ROCKS

A strong female character you can't help but love

Alan Black paints an out-of-this-world picture of young Sno busy outside her spacecraft in her EVA suit, by herself, mining asteroids for rock and hopefully, a rare metal or two. When she returns to her home base in Arizona City on a small planetoid called, Ceres, she gets in a barroom scrap with 4 fellow miners from a competing operation. Without harming so much as a fingernail, she puts them in their place and then shortly after blasts off into the asteroid belt again to work a claim.

It's what happens when they chase after her that makes Chewing Rocks so much fun to read. Great action, wonderful word visuals of the planetoid city, the spaceships and the mining operations along with a multitude of colorful characters made Chewing Rocks hard to walk away from…

By
James Paddock
, January 26, 2014 (author of
Deserving of Death
)

CHASING HARPO

CITYSunTimes, Scottsdale, Arizona at news.CITYSunTime.com

When an orangutan goes on the lam, anything can happen. Chasing Harpo, by Arizona author Alan Black hosts an intriguing cast of quirky characters you'd like to visit with longer. Including the star, Harpo -- an orangutan who believes humans are here purely for his entertainment and, of course, to deliver his food.

A fun ride and a great adventure for all ages, as Harpo and his trusty servant, Carl, try to outwit the zoo security team, the police, the attorney general and a gang of drug dealers.

By Melanie Tighe, October 1, 2013 (Anna Questerly author of
The Minstrel’s Tale
)

Clever humor

I found it thoroughly entertaining. The
humor is of the bizarre or zany variety. Black has a way of creating a turn of phrase or a situation that made me chuckle many times. I found myself liking the characters, all of whom where colorful, exaggerated stereotypes (a way of actually challenging those stereotypes by making me laugh at them). They were individuals that were easy to keep apart. This book is entirely written tongue in cheek but with an underlying serious message about our treatment of the environment and animals, especially in zoos. The story itself was a rollicking romp that included a fair bit of suspense without ever taking itself too seriously.

Seeing the world from the point of view of Harpo, the orangutan in some chapters made for a hilarious outside look at us as humans and made for some of the funnier aspects...this was a fun book to read and I recommend it for when you need to look at life a little less seriously for a bit.

By
Yvonne Hertzberger
,
January 2, 2014 (author of
The Dreamt Child
)

THE FRIENDSHIP STONES
(BOOK ONE OF AN OZARK MOUNTAIN SERIES)

Growing up in the Ozarks in the 1920s

An engrossing coming of age story set in the Ozark Mountains right after World War I. The heroine, 12-year-old LillieBeth Hazkit, lives with her parents in a two-room rented cabin. Work is scarce in the mountains, and her father, who was gassed in World War I, has to take a job far away at a charcoal burning company and is able to come home only on the weekend. The work does his damaged lungs (
no)
good.

LillieBeth cheerfully does a round of chores that would make a grown man blanch today. She also “harvests” small game for dinner with the family’s .22 rifle. She can go to school in a one-room schoolhouse only once a week because it’s so far from home. She brings the rest of the week’s work home to do there. With her cozy home and her parents she feels rich. After all, doesn’t she have two dresses, one for work and one for Sunday?

From a Sunday sermon she learns that God wants everybody to love all people, even the unlovable ones, so she sets out to befriend an old recluse, Fletcher Hoffman, a man who rode with Quantrill’s Raiders the Civil War and did his share of killing afterwards. He just wants to be left alone.

The story revolves around LillieBeth’s attempts to befriend Hoffman and the actions of a pair of violence of a pair of louts who attack Lily Beth and are have enjoyed raping women in the neighborhood for years, destroying their lives and any possibility they could marry. It’s the women’s word against theirs. They always say the women wanted it.

In addition LillieBeth’s landlady orders them to leave their cabin so that her son and his wife and his family will have a place to live. This will leave the Hazkit family homeless, and LillieBeth will be forced to leave the only home she has ever known.

LillieBeth’s emotions are becoming more complex as she grows into womanhood. She is confused by her conflicting emotions, wanting to do the right thing—to follow Bible’s injunction to love her neighbors, but she finds it hard to love the men who attacked her and the landlord who is evicting her family.

Black gives us a vivid description of life in the Ozark Mountains in the 1920s. He also gives us believable characters which we can love or hate as the story requires. Highly recommended. And when you finish reading it, give it to your 12-year-old daughter to read.

By
M
arilynn Larew
,
November 25, 2013 (author of
The Spider Catchers
)

A great story - first in a series!

It
follows the story of LillieBeth Hazkit and her family, in the 1920s mountains in Missouri. It's a hard-to-categorize book - young adult, Christian, historical fiction - but thoroughly enjoyable.

The book is very descriptive in the period detail - clothing and hairstyles, the one-room school house/church, the run-down cabin where LillieBeth and her family live, and the post-Civil War unemployment. The setting felt very familiar to me since I lived near the Ozarks years ago, and spent many summers camping in the hollers and picking up pebbles on the riverbanks. Because of some slightly mature subjects in the book, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone under about 12 years old, but there is nothing to offend anyone older than that. And even the mature parts are tastefully done.

LillieBeth is a 12 year old girl, right on the cusp of womanhood. She still loves playing in the woods and giggling with her girlfriends, but during the span of the book she is forced to grow up and take on more responsibility, including guarding a friend's dark secret and facing down men who would harm her family. She spends months befriending a difficult, angry neighbor, and starts to find her place as a young woman in her community. I won't spoil the ending for those who are considering buying the book, but I will say I'm looking forward to the next book in the series so I can find out what happens next.

By
Lisa Kearns
North Carolina, USA, February 5, 2014

THE GRANITE HEART
(BOOK TWO OF AN OZARK MOUNTAIN SERIES)

I bought this yesterday!

Again, this book, the second in the series of Ozark Mountains, is so refreshing. I was sad that it ended. I look forward to the "next" book. (It's coming soon!)
I shared with my sister, that Alan has expertly woven God in the storyline. She has now bought "The Friendship Stones" (See my review on this book) in the Kindle version at Amazon. The fact that a mother and son could team up together and give us high quality AND fun reading, it's just absolutely wonderful. The glossary at the end of the book is great learning. Made me laugh at how many I knew!

By
Fran Villa
, March 11, 2014