Ten Mile River - Softcover

Paul Griffin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1921520132 ISBN 13: 9781921520136

Publisher: The Text Publishing Company

Synopsis

A stunning debut novel about survival and friendship on the streets of New York City.

Best friends Ray and Jose are not your typical thirteen-year-olds. They?ve escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned building located near Manhattan Park called Ten-Mile River. With no use for school or families, street-smart Jose and bookish, introspective Ray have everything they need in each other. They are closer than brothers until they meet Trini. She?s smart, beautiful, and confident, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten-Mile River.

This is Paul Griffin?s first novel, and his spare moving prose and uncanny ear for authentic dialogue is guaranteed to garner many fans.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Griffin lives in New York City, where he works with youths in low-income schools and juvenile detention centers.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up—Despite his intimidating build, 14-year-old Ray is a tongue-tied, sensitive street kid with a penchant for reading anything and everything, from Scientific American to Siddhartha. After a stint in juvie, he and his best pal, reckless and charming José, are "on their own and on the run." The teens squat in an old railway stationhouse by Ten Mile River in a wooded area of New York City, stealing what they need to survive and pulling small jobs for extra cash. When they befriend a girl and her hairdresser aunt, they have the chance to make a clean living, but their choices are complicated by their loyalty to one another. Like the works of Adam Rapp and K. L. Going, Griffin's novel is introspective street lit, an illumination of petty crime and parentless childhoods that's more gritty than glamorous. The realistic dialogue, which is often quite graphic and filled with sexual innuendo, propels the plot, and the author specializes in capturing the vernacular: "Psh, I'd go behind m' boy's back like that? Psh, insultin me, man." The boys come to life on the pages, as does their relationship, and their conversations are often laugh-out-loud funny. Though the threat of violence looms through most of the book, the author doesn't quite evoke the shock or fear he's going for. Still, the plot defies predictions, and some memorable scenes and the strongly drawn characters lift the story above other urban tales of woe. Fans of Paul Volponi, take note.—Emily R. Brown, Providence Public Library, RI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
• ISBN 10: 1921520132
• ISBN 13: 9781921520136
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1