Title: The Beet Fields
Subtitle: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer
First published: 2000
Description: For a 16-year-old boy out in the world alone for the first time, every day’s an education in the hard work and boredom of migrant labor; every day teaches him something more about friendship, or hunger, or profanity, or lust—always lust. He learns how a poker game, or hitching a ride, can turn deadly. He discovers the secret sadness and generosity to be found on a lonely farm in the middle of nowhere. Then he joins up with a carnival and becomes a grunt, running a ride and shilling for the geek show. He’s living the hard carny life and beginning to see the world through carny eyes. He’s tough. Cynical. By the end of the summer he’s pretty sure he knows it all. Until he meets Ruby.
Subjects: Teenage boys, American Authors, Juvenile literature, Childhood and youth, Biography, Authors, juvenile literature, Authors, american, Adolescence, Carnivals, Homeless teenagers, Gary Paulsen, Children's fiction, Runaways, fiction, Migrant labor, fiction
Places: United States
People: Gary Paulsen
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3566.A834 Z4633 2000