Greyhound
By (Author) Steffan Piper
Amazon Publishing
AmazonEncore
20th April 2010
United States
General
Fiction
FIC
Paperback
256
Sebastien Ranes's single mom and her feckless boyfriend can't be bothered to take care of a stuttering twelve-year-old. Banished to live with his grandmother on the far side of the country, the boy can barely understand a bus schedule when he gets dumped at the Greyhound station in Stockton, California. Given $35 and a one-way ticket to Altoona, Pennsylvania, Sebastien must cross the country - alone, without a clue how to fend for himself. Filled with youthful anger and naivete, Sebastien heads out into the "Morning in America" of Ronald Reagan's 1980s, encountering temperamental bus drivers, charming, shifty, and downright dangerous strangers, the music of Daryl Hall and John Oates, and an ex-con named Marcus, who takes the boy under his wing. In an unforgettable trek that evokes Oliver Twist and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the unlikely pair lurch from one misadventure to another, tumbling toward an elusive understanding of where and how, in a troubling world, to look for light.
Steffan Piper was born in Pennsylvania and raised in England and various parts of Alaska. During his time in Alaska, the Mayor of Nome asked him to leave and never return, due to a minor misunderstanding. Steffan currently lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles with his family. Most of his writing occurs in the dead of night.