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2023: A tender portrait of four misfits, on the run across Texas.
2023: A tender portrait of four misfits, on the run across Texas.
It’s springtime in Oklahoma, and Ernie, an outcast in a group of outcasts, feels uneasy. Nerves at the abandoned summer camp where he and his fellow oddballs are crashing have been on edge since the arrival of a teenager named Coral, unceremoniously dropped off from her family’s minivan one afternoon. Adding to her aura of mystery, Coral doesn’t say a word. Ever.
When a drug lab explosion burns the compound to the ground, Ernie, Coral, and the hard-living couple Staci and Ray escape on a pair of motorcycles. Feeling shaky with fear and alive with a new surge of freedom, the four outcasts find a rundown house in rural Texas: It’s a place to stay, they tell themselves, for now. Yet to their surprise, over card games and wild strawberries and target-shooting and late-night dancing to ZZ Top on the local radio, a quirky little family forms. At the heart of their new home is Coral, whose silence only amplifies her strange, undefinable power and the sense that she found them for a reason.
But soon, tensions rise, and a mysterious threat begins to materialize—whether it’s coming from inside or outside the house still isn’t clear. All this crew knows is, now there’s something at stake: their chosen family, forged by both loneliness and joy, and bonded by an awkward kind of love.
Oklahoma and Texas
Thelocations in the novel are vague but that’s the point -these people are misfits and are fleeing across Texas. But to where? They don’t stay anywhere for very long.
When the book opens, we are at a commune run by Tim while his cousins, the owners, are in prison.The gang flee to Texas and a commune. At the commune, their prime aim is to cook meth.
This is the land of the motorbike enthusiast and the world of motorbikes apperas ten fold as does Carhartt clothing.
Destination/location: Texas, Oklahoma Author/guide: Jardine Libaire Departure Time: 2023
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