Fine Dark Line, A
by Joe R. Lansdale
Category: Fiction

During a sweltering East Texas summer, 13-year-old Stanley Mitchel Jr. begins a journey of awakening. His family runs the town's drive-in movie theater, where Stanley spends his time helping out, reading ten-cent comics, playing with his dog Nub and generally living a boy's life, circa 1958. When Stanley discovers a cache of old love-letters and starts to unravel a local mystery, however, he finds himself confronting secrets of ghosts, women, sex, race and his own courage. As he tells it, "I felt as if something living inside of me had been stolen, taken away and mistreated, then returned without all of its legs." Ultimately, it's a story about taking a clear-eyed look behind the veil and acknowledging the truth of things, without succumbing to them.