M i c h a e l D. B e i l
Summer at Forsaken Lake
On Sale Everywhere June 12, 2012 !
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A HUGE thank you shout-out to the Random House Sales Reps for choosing SUMMER AT FORSAKEN LAKE as their "rep pick" title for the summer!
Our Summer Rep Pick Title with Guest Reviewer Teresa
Today’s guest reviewer is Teresa, who is currently working with us in the Random House Kids Sales Dept as an intern.
Summer at Forsaken Lake centers around twelve-year old Nicholas, a New York City native who is not looking forward to spending his summer break in the country with his Uncle Nick, someone he barely knows, and his often irritating ten-year-old twin sisters, Haley and Hetty. Nicholas would rather stay in the city with his Mom and friends from his baseball team, or tag along with his Dad to Africa where he is working with Doctors Without Borders, a charity he has been volunteering with since the divorce. In fact, Nicholas would rather be anywhere but at Forsaken Lake, a town in the middle of nowhere where there will surely be nothing to keep him entertained. Before long Nicholas realizes just how wrong he was about everything: his uncle, Forsaken Lake and his first impression of how his summer would play out. It all starts when Nicholas meets Charlie, the local tomboy with a killer curve ball who quickly becomes his best friend and partner in crime. The story picks up when Nicholas discovers an old movie and a mysterious letter tucked away in a secret compartment in his father’s old room, which holds the key to why his father left Forsaken Lake and never returned so many years ago. Together Nicholas and Charlie seek to uncover the truth and find themselves uncovering much more than they originally bargained for along the way.
Michael Beil really delivers with this heartwarming, adventure-filled book that brings back the nostalgic feelings of childhood when summer seemed to stretch on forever and one summer could change everything. Readers of all ages will relate to these characters who are attempting to both hold onto summer and their childhoods even with their teenage years fast approaching―a transition that everyone can connect with. It is a charming story about friendship, adventure, long-buried family secrets and growing up over the course of one magical and mysterious summer vacation.
Summer at Forsaken Lake will be available in your favorite bookstore or library on June 12, while you’re waiting for it you can check out Michael Beil’s The Red Blazer Girls–a fun mystery series. And be sure to check back with us at RAoReading for a Q&A with the author in June too.
Summary:
With their father en route to Africa for Doctors Without Borders, city-kids Nicholas and younger twin sisters Hayley and Hetty are off to spend the summer with their Great-Uncle Nick at his house on Forsaken Lake. Despite some initial doubts, Nicholas is right at home in the country: he learns to sail, learns about his father as a boy, and makes fast friends with a local-girl, the tomboy Charlie.
The summer takes a turn toward the mysterious, though, when Nicholas discovers an old movie that his father made as a boy: it tells the story of the local legend, The Seaweed Strangler, but was never finished. Before long Nicholas wants answers both about the legend, and about the movie. Together, he and Charlie work to uncover the truth and discover some long-buried family secrets along the way.
In this lovely middle-grade novel, Michael D. Beil has invoked one of his own favorites, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, as well as other great summer books of years-past.
A GREAT Review of
SUMMER AT FORSAKEN LAKE
“Seldom stumble, never crumble
Try to tumble, life’s a rumble
Feel the stinging I’ve been given
Never ending, unrelenting
Heartbreak searing, always fearing
Never caring, persevering
Sail on, sail on sailor”
--The Beach Boys (1973)
“On the mound, the girl took a deep breath and let go. The pitch was chest high and well inside, and Nicholas instinctively jerked his head back—just in time to watch something extraordinary happen. A few feet before reaching him, the ball took a sharp left turn and gracefully crossed over the center of the plate, leaving him standing there open-mouthed. A perfect, big-league quality curveball, unlike anything he’d ever seen in New York.
“’Steee-rike three!’ the catcher yelled.
“’Yerrr outta there!’ the shortstop added unnecessarily.
“Nicholas let the bat fall to the ground at his feet, which were still frozen in place. ‘Who is this kid?’ he asked no one in particular.
“’She’s your worst nightmare, son,’ the coach answered. ‘A cute girl with a wicked curveball. Remember the name, kid: Charlotte Brennan. Charlie. You’ll be hearing it again.’
“’You sure you don’t wanna try again, city boy?’ the girl asked. ‘C’mon. You’re just getting warmed up.’ She seemed to want him to stick around, but Nicholas figured that was only because she wanted to humiliate him again.
“He smiled and shook his head. ‘Maybe another time. I’ve gotta go.’ Overhead, the rumble of thunder confirmed that he was making the right decision.
“’Well, I guess we’ll see ya ‘round,’ Charlie said, smiling back.
“Charlie Brennan. Remember that name.”
As fate would have it, Charlie Brennan will turn out to be Nicholas Mettleson’s constant companion this summer, the summer that his divorced parents send twelve year-old Nicholas and his twin ten year-old sisters to stay with their great-uncle Nick at Ohio’s Forsaken Lake. Nicholas’s namesake is the same guy with whom Nicholas’s father spent summers as a teenager – learning sailing and film making in the process -- until certain events caused Nicholas’s father to abruptly leave the lake community and never return.
In a pitch-perfect summer read for 10-14 year-olds, these long-buried mysteries from twenty-five years ago are unraveled by this son of the boy and this daughter of the girl who were, themselves, inseparable all those years ago -- until something went very wrong.
In the process of unraveling mysteries, Nicholas, Charlie, and the twins will all become experienced in the art of sailing. Nicholas and Charlie will learn some fundamentals of boat building. Nicholas will struggle mightily to learn how to connect with one of Charlie’s curveballs. The young people will all get to take their own shot at amateur film making.
And we will all be wondering what might have been today, had fate not thrown a monkey wrench into things a quarter-century ago. Is it possible that some things long ago broken might actually get put back together?
And had I read this book back in my adolescence, might it be possible that I’d be an experienced sailor today?
Talk about a realm of possibilities. SUMMER AT FORSAKEN LAKE will make a perfect companion to long, hot days; ice cold root beers; and sand between your toes.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
The Inspiration for Summer at Forsaken Lake
When my students, high school freshmen in New York City, learn that I grew up in a town with a population of 1200, their first reaction is always the same:
“Small towns are so boringggg.”
“There’s nothing to do.”
“Everybody knows everything about you.”
That last one always makes me laugh. The same kids who complain about everyone knowing all their secrets share their deepest secrets with THE WORLD on Facebook, on a daily basis. But I digress.
Certainly there are people in small towns who are bored, and who have “nothing to do,” but that wasn’t my experience -- ever. I am, and always have been, from the “Only Boring People Are Bored” school of thought, and worked hard as a child to develop and use my imagination. One of my favorite experiences from that time of my life is when I decided I had a future in Hollywood.
It practically kills me to admit this, but I got the idea from a made-for-TV movie on “The Wonderful World of Disney,” a Sunday evening staple in our home in Andover, Ohio. Johnny Whitacre, who was my age, starred in The Mystery of Dracula’s Castle, in which his character makes a movie. I was nothing if not stubborn, and figured that if Johnny Whitacre could do it, so could I. And so, at thirteen, armed with my dad’s 8-millimeter movie camera, some plastic fangs, and a few tubes of fake blood, I set out to make a horror movie.
I was determined to do Mr. Smarty-Pants Whitacre one better, though. I had no intention of recycling somebody else’s creation; I wanted a monster of my own. Tucked away in our bunk beds, my brother Steve and I whispered creepy-creature names at each other in the dark until we hit the jackpot: The Seaweed Strangler. We lived on Pymatuning Lake, which has more than its share of seaweed and swampy locations, and now that I had a main character and a setting, I was on my way.
Okay, so The Seaweed Strangler didn’t win any awards, and I didn’t go on to become the next Steven Spielberg (who also started out with an 8-mm camera, by the way). The truth is that the movie is still a work in progress. I continue to blame the film editing machine that broke down in mid-edit thirty-plus years ago, but now that I’ve had the film transferred to DVD, I’m running out of excuses not to finish it. (All of which really irritates Steve, who still hasn’t forgiven me for the two weeks he spent walking barefoot through the muck and mire while draped in seaweed!)
Last summer, though, I found a way to revive the Seaweed Strangler -- to bring the creature, and my movie, back to life. I started work on a novel about a boy who discovers his father’s partially finished movie -- titled, you guessed it, The Seaweed Strangler - and decides to add a few scenes of his own. No, I don’t have a son in real life, but that’s the best part about being a writer: I get to make stuff up, and use my imagination to let my characters do all the things I can’t, or hope to, or don’t want to, or would never, do.
Click on the link to see the original SEAWEED STRANGLER movie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE6nHYl-DEY
Copyright 2011 Michael D. Beil. All rights reserved.
