cover image Walking Dunes

Walking Dunes

Sandra Jean Scofield. Permanent Press (NY), $22 (247pp) ISBN 978-1-877946-12-7

Basin, in West Texas, is the setting of Scofield's impressive third novel, following the American Book Award-winning, NBA nominee Beyond Deserving . Here she draws a finely etched, sensitive portrait of an intelligent, imaginative but flawed young man coming of age under difficult circumstances. David Puckett is desperate to get through his senior year in high school and escape Basin forever. Aware of the social abyss that divides him from the country club set he encounters on the tennis tournament circuit, David becomes even more dissatisfied with his bickering parents--his sour, acerbic father, who has abandoned the family once before and will again, and his exhausted, slatternly mother. As he blunders his way through relationships with four young women, David discovers different aspects of his own nature and makes ethical choices that determine his future. In the end he sacrifices his better instincts for expediency, and breaks his own heart. Scofield's subtly nuanced portrayal of the awkwardness, confusion and inchoate desires of adolescence is remarkable for its balance, insight and cumulative power. She describes the West Texas weather and social climate with the same keen observation that distinguishes her depiction of character. Paperback rights to Plume/Avon. (Sept.)