Dignity is a tender coming-of-age novel about a schoolboy whose unlikely friendship with a misunderstood binman named Bogie teaches him about dignity, friendship, and the hidden richness of ordinary lives. Where did the idea behind this novel come from?
There’s a song by the Scottish band Deacon Blue called Dignity. The story told in the song was the inspiration behind the book and the central character Bogie. I’ve always loved the premise of an underdog quietly striving to achieve a goal. That formed the basis for the narrative and provided the foundation to allow the story to unfold.
Bogie speaks very little, often communicating more through his actions than his words. What drew you to such an understated character?
The book is set in my hometown of Petone, New Zealand. When I was growing up there, we had a local binman who kept our streets clean and very much kept himself to himself. I didn’t know the man at all, but as I created Bogie, I couldn’t help but wonder what that binman from my 80s childhood was like. His presence was very much with me as I wrote, and he evolved as he landed on the page. Because he said so little, the character Bogie intrigued me. I placed myself in the boy’s shoes, trying to understand him more, yet from the outset, I knew he’d have a reticence to share anything about himself. It’s funny, but there’s a school of thought that authors should know everything about their characters before they set them on the page, and some writers adopt that by creating whole dossiers on the characters within their books. I’m completely the opposite; I want to discover my characters as I go along and see how they react to events as they happen. Sometimes they surprise me, and that’s the joy of writing: when the unexpected appears on the page, and I think, Woah, didn’t see that coming!
The narrator is also undergoing a coming-of-age journey. How did you balance his growth with Bogie’s story so that neither character overshadowed the other?
Dignity was always going to be about Bogie, but given his taciturnity, he was never going to tell the tale himself. The older narrator, looking back at his pre-teen years and his relationship with the older man, became the vehicle for telling Bogie’s story. In itself, though, I didn’t think there was enough to sustain a novel, so I introduced backstory for the boy, conscious that the pursuit of the boat was imperative to the outcome. If I’d placed more emphasis on the boy’s growth and his life, I believe I would have lost the foundation of the story, and a different book would emerge that placed Bogie into the background, the very place from where I wanted him elevated!
What do you hope readers notice differently about the overlooked people in their own communities after reading Dignity?
One of the great disparities in the developed world is the reward that comes to those who, I consider, do very little that is worthy. For reasons I will never fully understand, our capitalist model rewards certain industries and roles far more greatly than others. Yet some of our most honorable professions- teachers, carers, service workers, emergency services, the key workers that we couldn’t do without during the pandemic – are the least rewarded, and often some of those professions are looked down upon. If there’s one thing that I hope readers take away, it’s the understanding that there is worth in everyone, and no matter how overlooked, those people should be recognized as contributing something important to our society and be allowed to pursue their dreams.
DIGNITY is a coming-of-age tale exploring the friendship between a young boy and a local street-sweeper, Bogie, a taciturn figure who prefers to pass through life unnoticed by those who look down on him. Providing support to each other, they navigate a path to achieving Bogie’s ambition of retiring to a sailboat, and the boy surviving the challenges of early adolescence: the bullying he experiences; the angst of young love; and the frustration of dealing with Bogie when the older man decides to give up his dream.
At its heart, it is the story of a quiet man overcoming adversity and a young man finding his place in the world. With vivid characters and a sharply observed setting in 1980s New Zealand, DIGNITY reminds us that there is much to respect about those who choose to walk quietly among us.
Craig Brown’s Dignity is a warm, quietly observant coming-of-age novel set in 1980s Petone, New Zealand, built around an unlikely friendship between a schoolboy narrator and Malcolm Beaumont, better known around town as Bogie. Bogie is a council binman, bottle collector, pub regular, former sailor, and a man most people notice only enough to dismiss. The narrator does something different. He sits beside him at lunch, asks questions, watches his habits, and gradually discovers a life far richer than Bogie’s shabby clothes and near-silence suggest. At the center of that life is a dream: Bogie has been collecting refundable bottles for years so he can buy a boat. That simple goal gives the novel its structure, but the real story is about the relationships that form around it and the way a boy’s understanding of other people slowly becomes more generous and complicated.
One of the book’s strengths is the way Brown lets Bogie reveal himself without turning him into a speechmaker. He’s famously economical with words, sometimes answering questions so literally that the narrator has to puzzle out what he means. Much of what we learn comes instead through Bogie’s routines: collecting discarded bottles for their few cents of value, carefully depositing his coins, restoring an old sailboat plank by plank, quietly absorbing insults, and refusing to perform his goodness for anyone. His patience becomes especially meaningful after his boatshed is set on fire and the vessel he has spent so long restoring is damaged. Rather than letting anger define what happens next, Bogie repairs the boat again. Eventually he replaces its old name, BIT BY BIT, with a single word painted in gold: Dignity. The choice captures what the novel has been showing all along. Dignity here isn’t status, polish, or respectability. It’s the ability to know your own worth without demanding that everyone else recognize it first.
The first-person narrator gives the novel a second coming-of-age story alongside Bogie’s pursuit of the sea. He’s funny, insecure, observant, occasionally selfish, and believable as a boy who doesn’t yet have the language for everything he’s learning. His friendship and early romance with Katie Parata bring some of the book’s sweetest scenes, while his encounters with Willy Simmonds and Willy’s friends bring out fear, resentment, jealousy, and eventually a more difficult kind of empathy. These schoolyard relationships could easily have stayed fixed in simple categories, but Brown allows them to change. One of the most satisfying developments comes when hostility begins to loosen its grip and the boys are forced to see one another as more than enemies. Bogie’s influence is central to that change, though he rarely teaches through explicit advice. Near the end, the narrator reflects that it was through Bogie’s “silences and actions, through his patience and forgiveness” that the lessons came. That feels like a good description of the novel’s method too.
The setting gives Dignity much of its personality. Brown fills Petone with paper rounds, dairies, rugby fields, pubs, school socials, Guy Fawkes fireworks, battered bikes, returnable bottles, working-class homes, and the windy waterfront. The detail creates a community that feels inhabited. There’s also a strong awareness of class throughout the story. The narrator grows up among people who’ve learned to keep their ambitions modest, while Bogie occupies an even stranger social position, known by almost everyone but understood by very few. That makes his eventual decision especially powerful. When the narrator asks where he plans to go once the boat is ready, Bogie finally gives an answer expansive enough for the life he wants: “Wherever I want.” It’s a small line, but after watching him save, endure, repair, and wait, those words feel enormous. Freedom in Dignity isn’t abstract. It has been purchased bottle by bottle and earned through years of persistence.
What I liked most was the novel’s affection for people whose inner lives can be easy to overlook. Bogie becomes memorable because Brown doesn’t reduce him to a symbol of virtue. He drinks, smokes, holds grudges, dislikes certain people, enjoys his solitude, and can be frustratingly difficult to read. His dignity comes from being fully himself. The closing chapters give that idea a lovely payoff. Bogie sails away without fanfare, and years later a postcard arrives for the narrator from somewhere warm and distant. There’s no long explanation, just a photograph of Dignity on clear water and two words from Bogie: “ALL’S GOOD.” By then, that’s enough. Dignity is ultimately a novel about seeing people more closely, about the understated ways one person can shape another, and about a man who spends years building the means to choose his own horizon. The book earns its emotion patiently, which makes its final image of Bogie living on his own terms feel deeply satisfying.
The Clock in My Head Never Stops follows a sixteen-year-old boy through an ordinary school day transformed by severe anxiety into an exhausting battle against time, expectation, and his racing thoughts. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I was inspired to write this story because while I was in high school, I struggled with severe anxiety. The protagonist of the story, Billy Thompson, is based on me. My anxiety became so severe that I had to leave school to go to a homebound program, just like Billy. I can directly relate to the racing thoughts that Billy experiences throughout the story.
How much of Billy’s inner voice came directly from your own experiences with anxiety?
A lot of his inner voice was directly based on my own experiences with anxiety. Although the story is fiction, many of Billy’s thoughts are similar to what I was experiencing at the time.
Why did you choose to center most of the novel on one seemingly ordinary school day?
The story is meant to represent this moment that Billy is on the verge of a breakdown. I felt that I could effectively convey this experience through one day because I packed a significant amount of detail into Billy’s thoughts. The extreme nature of his racing thoughts is both exhausting and claustrophobic. By the end of this one day, I believe readers can genuinely understand how difficult life is for this person suffering from severe anxiety.
How did you balance making Billy’s repetitive thought spirals realistic without losing the reader?
Even though his thoughts are repetitive and extreme, I think readers are drawn to Billy’s struggle. Everyone, at some point in life, has gone through anxiety, so they can relate to things that are affecting Billy. The story also provides an honest, unfiltered view of this severe anxiety, because it is driven by Billy’s inner thoughts. Because readers can see into his head space, they receive an authentic perspective of how severe anxiety can affect someone.
A Small Memory follows an eighteen-year-old college basketball player and his best friend as they serve as live-in counselors for adults with intellectual disabilities while navigating the challenges of young adulthood. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This novel exemplifies that old adage, “Write what you know.” It was actually inspired by my experience living in the circumstances the two main characters encounter. This was several decades ago when that concept was brand new so everyone was feeling their way. Living in that group home while experiencing independence myself along with my best friend provided the inspiration.
The friendship between Mike and Ted is the emotional foundation of the novel. Why was it important to make that relationship central?
As I said, my friend from high school and I did actually room together under those circumstances and this is a tribute to that friendship. Also, growing up, I read John Knowles classic, A Separate Peace. There is a deeply rooted friendship at the heart of that novel, but ultimately tragic consequences destroys its future. While there is a traumatic event in my novel, I wanted to show the resilience of true friendship. Most people have that one special friend that exerts a hold on us for whom we would sacrifice so much.
Ted’s injury forces Mike to confront guilt, grief, and limits he cannot control. How did you approach writing that emotional journey?
I will admit to being a pantser for a large part of my approach to writing. The first part of the novel is almost a memoir as most of those circumstances were based on things we actually experienced. The remaining two-thirds is one hundred percent fiction. When Mike is facing emotional struggles on multiple fronts, I had to be careful to not let it become something that was a simple pity party he was throwing for himself. Those sections went through multiple edits and beta readers to help me make certain that Mike didn’t become one-dimensional, or that his actions would be out of character. I also thought back to challenges I faced in maintaining friendships under difficult circumstances and drew upon those.
If readers remember one message from the novel, what would you like it to be?
In the summer of 1975, Mike Youngstown is eighteen, restless for independence, and certain the future was waiting. He and his best friend, Ted, take jobs as live-in counselors at a group home in their Ohio hometown-a stepping-stone before college, basketball, and adulthood begin in earnest. Then one violent night shatters everything.
When Ted is brutally attacked by a resident and left in a coma, Mike is forced to confront a question that will haunt him: Why wasn’t he there? As Ted slowly awakens with no memory of his former life-or of Mike-their easy shorthand of nicknames and shared dreams vanishes. What remains is a fragile stranger in his friend’s body, and a guilt Mike cannot outrun.
A Small Memory is a quiet, emotionally resonant novel about friendship tested by trauma, the burden of responsibility, and the long work of forgiveness. For readers who believe the deepest love stories are sometimes about friends, it asks: Who are we when the past is gone-and who will we be if it returns?
Reel Around the Fountain follows a boy from a working-class family navigating his growing awareness about his own sexuality as he searches for answers about his family’s past. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The core of the book’s genesis wasn’t so much about family history as it was about examining how queer kids are often targeted by predators. Queer kids tend to be good at keeping secrets — at blending into the background, into the walls — and I wanted to explore and expose that. The intersection of queerness and working-class, paycheck-to-paycheck life creates conditions predators can take advantage of. That intersection wasn’t something I saw represented growing up, and it’s still not something I find often, but I wanted to portray it with fairness and affection. It’s a world I know well, and I wanted to honor it.
But I was equally interested in family dynamics, and how those dynamics create room for people like priests to exploit queer kids. As I structured and wrote the book, though, the family itself started to take over. I felt it was important to show that kids from poor backgrounds aren’t exploited because of some lack of love or parenting — it’s that society creates the conditions that marginalize working-class families in the first place, and predators find the cracks in those conditions.
The story captures working-class life with remarkable specificity. How important was it to portray that community with both honesty and affection?
This was extremely important to me. I didn’t want to pander, stereotype, or romanticize working-class life and people. It was key to me to examine how we pull the levers we have access to in this life — and sometimes that may not be many levers at all. In addition to this, I wanted to explore gender roles, and how working-class life is often misunderstood to be rigidly gendered when, in fact, that isn’t always the case. With the grandparents in particular, I wanted to examine masculinity and femininity as a spectrum, not a binary norm. The grandfather and grandmother expose how circumstance often dictates what gender expression in family caregiving actually looks like.
Working-class life also often starts earlier than other facets of life do. White-collar, wealthier kids get a different kind of upbringing — more protected, more cushioned. Working-class kids shoulder different burdens, and shoulder them sooner. Through JP and his family, I wanted to explore that. I also wanted to highlight how the institutions that are supposed to protect people — police, social services, hospitals — often aren’t trustworthy, or aren’t there for people like JP’s family when it counts.
JP slowly learns that every family member remembers the past differently. What does the novel suggest about the relationship between memory and truth?
In any love circle — the one you’re born into or the one you build — stories are told by the storyteller, not recorded by some neutral archivist. As a storyteller myself, I can’t count how many times I’ve sat across from someone I love and found we remember the same event completely differently. I like that. And I know my version isn’t absolute truth. Instead, it’s a form of characterization. So while JP is trying to piece together the story of his birth, that search is also a way for him — and for the reader — to understand each family member through how they tell it. Every version of the story reveals as much about the teller as it does about the event.
I also think it’s important that truth, for the individual, is shaped by survival, not accuracy. What we remember is what we can handle remembering — what lets us survive the day, and the times, we’re living through. JP’s quest for the truth of his birth shows that we can never fully know it. Memory is fluid and fleeting. That’s part of the human condition. I hope that by the end, the reader is still left without the full truth of his birth story — but with the understanding that each storyteller’s memory reveals something about them, not about the events themselves.
What do you hope readers take away about family, forgiveness, and the stories we inherit?
We inherit stories, but since stories are fluid with memory, and truth is subjective, how we choose to shoulder and carry the burden of those stories matters. The truth of a story changes and evolves as we change and evolve as human beings. That’s key to this novel. We inherit family burdens, and those burdens are carried differently as we move through — and change within — this world. I want to be deliberate here with the word change instead of grow. Shouldering the burden of stories isn’t a progressive climb toward growth; it’s up and down, like every other facet of life. Where we are — reacting to outside circumstances — shapes our truth and our memory in that moment.
Forgiveness is a big part of this story, but for me as a writer, what mattered most was that JP needs to forgive himself — for the blame he’s chosen to inherit, both for the weight of his family’s beginning and for the abuse by the priest. If we can’t first forgive ourselves for things — even things that were never our fault, but that we assume blame for anyway — we can’t truly forgive the people closest to us.
His father took a drunken fall in the shower and never walked again. His mother walked out of the maternity ward and never looked back. His grandmother gave up her dream job to keep the family afloat. Everyone said JP’s birth ruined their lives-but no one ever explained why. Now thirteen, JP is determined to uncover the truth. Between visiting his father in a nursing home, sneaking whiskey gingers with his older sister, and serving at Catholic funerals for tip money, he pieces together the family mythology surrounding the day he was born. What he finds is messy, funny, cruel, and unexpectedly tender: love warped by guilt, superstition, and survival. Set in a fading cereal-factory town, Reel Around the Fountain is a queer coming-of-age novel about music, mythmaking, and growing up under the weight of being blamed for everything that went wrong.
Grace Notes follows an anxious young man who desperately wants to understand why he feels disconnected from himself and others, and whether faith can offer him a place where he truly belongs. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My life. This book started off as a memoir then morphed into fiction when I realized adding some spice, i.e. fiction, made for a tastier dish, i.e., story. Calling it autofiction is appropriate.
Music plays an important role throughout the book, and the title Grace Notes carries both musical and spiritual meaning. What does the title represent to you personally?
We are, all of us, grace notes in God’s Symphony.
Is a grace note essential to the piece of music or expendable?
That’s the tension I try to maintain throughout the book until its climax in Jerusalem. The tension is established with the conversation between Adam and Jerry on a dorm rooftop when Adam decides that grace notes are expendable, therefore life is meaningless and Jerry’s counterpoint conversation with Andy, who has just attempted suicide, and Jerry advocates that grace notes are essential, so encourages Andy to play his note with all his heart.
Rog, Barbara, and several other mentors leave a lasting impression on Jerry’s life. Were any of these characters inspired by people who helped shape your own journey?
Yes, absolutely. A few years ago, I finally mailed Rog—I was not able to track down an address for Barb, and they had divorced after they left Tenafly—a thank you letter for how much he had really saved my life and introduced me to a world grounded in unconditional love.
Is there a lasting message you hope readers will carry with them after finishing Grace Notes?
In a word: hope. Life can get better. Life can be good. And encourage readers to follow the path with their name and only their name on it towards knowing and accepting who they truly are. It truly is a journey worth taking, always hearing Joseph Campbell’s quote: The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are. And when you find who you are, there you will find God as well.
As James Baldwin wrote, “You don’t have a home until you leave it.” This isn’t your grandma’s faith journey. It’s Christianity with the gloves off—blisteringly honest, irreverently soulful, and deeply human.
Grace Notes is a spiritual, coming-of-age epic. From a panic attack at a high school party to an emotional reckoning in Jerusalem, Jerry’s path to belief doesn’t follow tradition—it shatters it. Along the way, he stumbles through trauma, seminary, sex, activism, burnout, mysticism, and piano solos that speak when words fail. He loses the trail more than once, but never stops searching for home—spiritual, emotional, and physical.
Marked by raw confession, unexpected grace, and gut-punching moments of revelation, Grace Notes explores what it means to confront your past, embrace your brokenness, and find God in the places you least expect. For readers who are spiritual but skeptical, wounded but seeking, this is the story of how one man’s messy, aching search for belonging leads to belief and the home for which he has always yearned.
How the Winterlilies Grow follows a young woman desperate to save her mother, who sets out on a journey for a healing flower, meeting with tests of courage and spiritual challenges along the way. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My desire is to return morality and Truth back into storytelling. I love fantastical media and learning more about theology. Specifically, I am obsessed with the movie about Rapunzel. Adventure, comedic quips, warmth, seeking belonging alongside beauty, the imagery of a magical healing flower. In this world, the flower isn’t magical, but rather a representation of elemental things created by God like medicine. God heals and doesn’t heal for reasons unknown, but they are reasons that are just. In this book, I wanted to showcase healing with medicine, healing by the creator, a time that the creator doesn’t heal, and how we can strive in the waiting. I wrote this book during a time of my own sickness, and I didn’t know if God would heal me. It was a time when I clung to my faith as my body whittled away, and I could no longer eat food. I wanted to write a story where the reader can find value in most lines whether they relate to Aradella’s pain or Lykke’s clumsy joy or Giselle’s sickness, daydream about visiting Thiddlestacks and Frosty Halo, find resilience like the Hunyljavekians, enjoy the many creatures, and learn about a creator who some claim to be absent, but is actively providing. I wrote this book for fantasy lovers, those grieving or dealing with church hurt, for those questioning God. Ultimately, this story was written intentionally with an engaging storyline and I am eager for people to read it.
The novel features dwarves, goblins, sirens, enchanted weapons, and hidden gardens alongside spiritual lessons. How did you balance classic fantasy elements with the book’s faith-centered message?
This is a fantastic question and one that I thought a lot about. God has given us the gift of imagination because he is an imaginative God, so both imagination and creation are a reflection of Him. These are fun elements to use, and we forget a fruit of the spirit is joy, so it is alright to bring joy to others and play and entertain. That being said, In literature, I am wary of the normalization that magic is a good tool and a way to solve problems. I tried to be intentional that magic and enchantment was used by those who do not know the creator while those who are followers of the creator relied on gifts of the creator like imagination, engineering, peace, prayer, teamwork, and intelligence. Fantasy is the vehicle to spread the gospel and talk about God. How the Winterlilies Grow is the perfect book for Christian parents to use as a tool to have faith-filled discussions with their kids who are in 8th grade and up.
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IngramSpark in print and e-book formats starting Oct 6, 2026.
The story visits a wide variety of places and introduces many different creatures and cultures. Which part of the world was your favorite to create, and why?
My favorite town is Hunyljavek – home of the dwarves. It is a place that once was riddled with hardship and pain, but instead of staying in their suffering, they turned their eyes and hearts towards “the creator” and made new traditions that were joyful. When you go there, you can see hints of the brokenness (not many women or children), but it has been redeemed. On a more stylistic note, I appreciate viking culture and I tried to incorporate small elements from them into Hunyljavekian society from their grooming to their armor. The aesthetic of the town and the food they eat is partly inspired by Icelandic culture which is a beautiful culture. From an aesthetic standpoint, I would live in Frosty Halo ~ the sledding, bakeries, angels, choir concerts, lights, community ~ it is a porcelain Christmas village come to life.
Without revealing spoilers, was there a character who surprised you during the writing process by taking the story in an unexpected direction?
There is a character in the book who I wrote to be the comedic relief or at times the moral guide. In a way, this character reminds me a bit of my father- the way he is able to bring joy into hard situations, yet in this book, an event occurs where he faces loss after having already gone through loss. I think his identity shift is a powerful one because as followers, sometimes we believe we have to force ourselves to be happy through pain because the Bible tells us to have a joy beyond circumstances. In fact, in a separate book I am writing, this character holds joy through trauma for the sake of others. His shift shows that it is alright to mourn, grieve, cry, and to be completely shaken by events that take place. It reminded me of Noami in the book of Ruth where her name meant pleasant and the grief made her “bitter” aka Mara. Jesus wept and grieved Lazarus even though He knew he would be resurrected. This character has been holding on to this grief for so long that this shift was inevitable. It is alright to experience it. Just remember that no one can take away Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross from you as you go through those highs and lows.
Aradella has lived her life with no control. Those around her die, and now her mother faces her end at the hands of a deadly disease, Aurora Veins. To save her, she must place her trust in a forgotten fairytale and find a fictitious healing flower, a winterlily, and commit treason against a king her father served loyally until death. Will she find a cure, freedom, and the control she desperately craves – and can she do it without losing her life? HOW THE WINTERLILIES GROW is an award-winning tale of adventure and rekindled faith. Aradella will encounter pirates, dwarves, goblins, elves, reindeer, wyverns, a kitten, and dragons who will either help her or stand in her way. A Love Knudsen wrote this book as a balance between faith and fantasy with the hope to give glory to God.
Rapid City Summer follows a resentful fifteen-year-old runner whose move from Chicago to South Dakota leads her toward new friendships, family healing, outdoor adventure, and a stronger sense of identity. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
There were a few sources of inspiration; the most prominent being my work as a middle school ELA teacher. Students in that age group (ages 12-14) are starting to get too old for most middle grade books, and some young adult titles have more mature themes and content. I wanted to write a novel that fit this young teen age group, with characters and topics they could relate to and learn from. I was also inspired by how the outdoors has shaped who I am today, and I wanted to share that with readers, too.
Why did you choose running and fly fishing as the activities that shape Natalie’s growth?
Running and fly fishing are both passions of mine that have greatly shaped who I am today. Both sports have taught me lots of important lessons, such as patience and delayed gratification. They have brought me to incredible places and connected me with great people. I also enjoy reading stories that include more “niche” topics, and you don’t see a lot of fiction that includes fly fishing!
How did you develop the warm but complicated relationship between Natalie and her grandmother?
Natalie’s grandmother was inspired by my relationship with my own grandma (except she was around my entire childhood, unlike Natalie and her grandmother). Growing up, my grandma was like a second parent to me, and I value all the time I got to spend with her. As a reader, I gravitate toward stories with complicated family dynamics, so I wanted to infuse some of that into this story, too. Ultimately, I wanted to showcase how meaningful and valuable grandparent/grandchild relationships are, and the scenes with Natalie and her grandma were some of my favorite scenes to write.
What research or personal experience helped you portray the landscapes, wildlife, and outdoor culture of South Dakota?
My husband’s family is from South Dakota, and we’ve been traveling there together for the past decade. We’re both teachers, so we spend part of our summer break fly fishing in different states, including South Dakota. I brought a lot of my personal experiences into this story, with some fictional fishing stories mixed in, too. While writing Rapid City Summer, I wanted to share the beauty of South Dakota and Montana with readers, without giving away all my favorite spots, so I did change the names of certain locations! I hope readers feel like they are transported to the mountains and rivers when they read Rapid City Summer.
Fifteen-year-old Natalie Ryba never asked to leave everything behind. When her mother takes a new job in Rapid City, South Dakota, Natalie is forced to trade her friends, her track team, and the life she loved for something completely unfamiliar. Now she’s stuck navigating a new town, a complicated relationship with her estranged grandmother, and unexpected feelings for the boy next door. Nothing feels like home. But the Black Hills have a way of changing people. As Natalie learns to fly fish, she begins to find confidence, independence, and a new sense of purpose. What starts as a reluctant summer becomes something more—a chance to discover who she really is. Then everything changes. After a trip to Montana, Natalie is faced with news that will test everything she’s learned. Now she must decide: retreat to the comfort of who she was, or step forward into who she’s becoming. Rapid City Summer is a heartfelt coming-of-age story about resilience, identity, and finding your place when life takes an unexpected turn. Perfect for readers who enjoy emotional YA fiction, strong female protagonists, and stories set against the backdrop of the American West.
