Product Description

They have one summer to find what was lost long ago.

"Never settle for less than the truth," she told him. But when you don't even know your real name, the truth gets a little complicated. It can nestle so close to home it's hard to see. It can even flourish inside a lie. And as Chase Walker discovered, learning the truth about who you are can be as elusive--and as magical--as chasing fireflies on a summer night. A haunting story about fishing, baseball, home cooking, and other matters of life and death.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95949 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781595543257
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In his fifth novel, Martin (Maggie; When Crickets Cry) offers the same brand of sentimental Southern storytelling that has endeared him to readers. Just before T-boning her Impala into a train, a woman on a suicide run kicks her horrifically abused little boy, known only as Snoot—or to the state, John Doe 117—out of the car. Chase Walker, a reporter for the Brunswick Daily in Glen County, Ga., is assigned to follow up on the boy, whose abandonment mirrors Chase's own haunted past. The little boy, apparently mute, is an artistic prodigy who excels at chess and quickly works his way into Chase's heart. Martin's strength is in his memorable characters, especially Uncle Willie, whose fresh quips ("as out of place in South Georgia as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs"), penchant for Krispy Kreme doughnuts and mysterious past keep readers engrossed. Here, as in some of his other novels, Martin can't resist piling on unnecessary tragedies; his characters and their issues are enough to keep the pages turning. Although the plot needs fine-tuning, Martin's prose is lovely, and the flashback parallel stories of a grown man abandoned as a child and the neglected boy will ensure readers keep the Kleenex handy. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

I stepped out into the sunlight humming a Pat Green tune, slipped on my sunglasses, and stared out over the courthouse steps. After three days of incarceration, not much had changed. Brunswick, Georgia, was like that. Discarded bubblegum, flat as half-dollars, dotted the steps like splattered ink. Lazy, blimpish pigeons strutted the sidewalk begging for bread scraps or the sprinkles off somebody's double-shot mocha latte. In the alley across the street, an entire herd of stray cats crept toward the wharf just four blocks down. The sound of seagulls told them the shrimp boats had returned. And on the steps next to me, two officers lifted a tattooed man, whose feet and hands were shackled and cuffed, up the steps and, undoubtedly, into Judge Thaxton's courtroom. Based on the mixture of saliva and epithets coming out of his mouth, he wasn't too crazy about going. No worries. Given my experience with Her Honor, his stay in her courtroom wouldn't be long.

His next short-term home would be a holding cell downstairs. These were cold, dark, windowless, and little more than petri dishes for mold and fungi. I know this because I've been in them on more than one occasion. The first time I stayed here as a guest, I scratched Chase was here into the concrete block wall. This time I followed it up with Twice. Makes me laugh to think about it. Sort of following in Unc's footsteps.

Two blocks down, rising above the rest of town like the Ferris wheel at a county fair, stood the bell tower above the Zuta Bank and Trust. Most churches-turned-banks have that. At the turn of the century, its Russian Orthodox congregation had dwindled down to nothing, leaving the priest to roam the basement like the Phantom in his catacomb.

And while the Silver Meteor was the most famous rail ever to run these woods, she couldn't hold a candle to the one that ran underground.

When the first Russian immigrants appeared in the late 1800s, they built on an existing footprint. A hundred years earlier, the local inhabitants had built their own meetinghouse. The building served several purposes: town hall, church, and shelter. Unique to the structure was a basement. Because much of South Georgia rests so close to the water table, they dug the basement into a hill, then lined the walls and floors with several feet of coquina. This did not mean it stayed dry, but it was dry enough. Through two trapdoors and one hidden stairwell, the townsfolk survived multiple Indian attacks and two Spanish burnings of the building above. Few today know about the basement. Maybe just the four of us. Sure, folks know it was there at one time, but most think it was filled in when the ZB&T was built. Scratchings on the walls show the names of slaves who knelt in the dark, listened, and prayed while dogs sniffed above.

Eventually the Phantom vacated as well, leaving the building empty for nearly a decade. Hating to see it go to waste and needing a place from which to loan money, a local businessman bought the building, ripped out half the pews, one confessional, and most of the altar, and installed counters and a vault. Local sentiment swayed in his favor. The depression was still fresh on people's minds, and in that mind-set you couldn't let a perfectly good building go to waste. If you built the church, don't take it personally. Just because folks around here don't like your brand of God doesn't mean they don't like your brand of architecture. Count your blessings. Most in Glynn County echoed this sentiment. Some of the locals proudly traced their roots to the Founding Fathers--the English prisoners sent from England to inhabit the colony back before the Revolution. Such sentiment was not unique; folks in Australia did the same. In the sticks of Brunswick, Georgia, rebellion was as hardwired into the DNA of the residents as was the love of Georgia Bulldog football.

While South Georgia found itself squarely embedded in the Bible Belt, and most churches were filled on Sundays, only Saturdays were sacred. Saturday afternoons from September to December, folks huddled around the altar of an AM station and worshipped the red and black of the Bulldogs. And while local pastors were much admired and respected, none carried the weight of the radio voice of the Bulldogs, Larry Munson. If Larry said anything at all, it was gospel. Throughout the decades, much has been written about Notre Dame and Touchdown Jesus, The Crimson Tide and Bear Bryant, and Penn State and Paterno, but from the salt marsh to the mountains, it was a certifiable fact that God himself was a Georgia Bulldog. How else did Larry Munson break his chair?

November 8, 1980. A minute to go in the fourth quarter. The Gators led the Bulldogs by a point. The Bulldogs had the ball, but ninety-three yards stood between them, the goal line, and their shot at the national title. On the second play of the game, Herschel Walker had bounced off a tackle and scorched seventy-two yards for six points and the beginnings of immortality. Now he stood on the field, having rushed for more than two hundred yards, either a target or a decoy. Buck Belue of Valdosta, Georgia, took the snap, pump faked--causing Florida Gator Tony Lilly to stumble--and dumped the ball down the left sideline to Lindsey Scott, who high-stepped ninety-three yards and joined Herschel atop Mt. Olympus. Amidst the mayhem in the press box, Larry Munson would break his folding chair, solidifying his place alongside the commentating gods and inside the heart of every man, woman, and child in the state of Georgia. Sports Illustrated later called it the "Play of the Decade," and many sportswriters agreed that Herschel Walker was the greatest athlete ever to play college football.

Folks in Georgia need no further argument. The State rests.

My office at the Brunswick Daily sat across the street, looking down on me. I could see the rolling slide show of my screen saver shining through my third-story window. My perch. As a reporter assigned to the court beat, I kept my finger on the court's pulse by watching these steps. The sign above my head read Glynn County Jail, but I didn't turn and look at it. Didn't need to.

After three days in jail, I was pretty sure that my editor had bitten his nails to the quick and was up there eyeing me from his perch, just seconds from walking out the double doors across the street. I looked east, toward the water and my boat. Home sounded like a good idea. I needed to get a shower, put on some deodorant, and breathe something other than dank cell stench. The paper could wait.

Uncle Willee sat in the driver's seat smiling at me from beneath his wide-brimmed palmetto leaf hat, called a "Gus." It's a cowboy hat for hot weather, a lightweight version of the hat made famous by Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove. The brim was soiled and crown wrinkled, worn dirty by a farrier with a fishing addiction. It sagged a bit around the edges but curled up at the ends--a mirrored contrast to his face.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and sniffed the salty air blowing in over St. Simons, across the marsh, and bringing with it the ripe smell of curdling salt and mud--a function of our geography. The Gulf Stream, some hundred and fifty miles due east, keeps constant pressure against the East Coast's most western edge--something akin to a hedge--causing the "Bermuda High." Thanks to it, the Golden Isles live under a constant sea breeze that keeps both the no-see-ums--invisible gnats with an attitude--and hurricanes at bay.

The coastal rivers of Georgia, like the Satilla, the Altamaha, and the Little Brunswick, flow out of the west Georgia mountains through the Buffalo Swamp and empty into the cordgrass of the marsh flats. Like a seine made of cheesecloth, the marsh filters the flow and sifts the sediment, creating a pluffy, soft mud.

Here in this pungent muck, native anaerobic bacteria decay bottom matter and release a gaseous bouquet that smells like rotten eggs. As the tide recedes, fiddler crabs, snails, worms, and other tiny inhabi­tants burrow into the pluff where they hope to escape being slow-cooked at a broiling 140 degrees. As the tide rises, the critters climb from their holes, where they--like beachcombers--bask and bathe.

During peak tourist season, visitors stroll the sidewalks, sniff the same air, and wrinkle their noses. "Something die?" Technically, yes, the marsh is always dying. But then the tide returns, trades old for new, and the canvas gives birth again.

To us--those who seek the solace of the marsh--it is a stage where God paints--yellow in the morning, green toward noon, brownish in the afternoon, and blood red toward evening. It is the sentinel that stands guard at the ocean's edge, protecting the sea from the runoff that would kill it. It is a selfless and sacrificial place. And when I close my eyes, it is also the smell of home.

When I graduated college, I came back to Brunswick, bought an acre along the Altamaha and a sailboat named Gone Fiction at the annual police auction. She was a thirty-six-foot Hunter and had been confiscated during an offshore drug raid. The SWAT guys at the auction said they'd busted some Florida writer running drugs along the coast. When his books didn't sell, he traded his pen for a habit and joined the dark side. I didn't know a thing about sailing, but she looked cozy--had a bed, toilet, shower, small kitchen, and a bow big enough for a folding chair. Not to mention a rope railing where I could prop up my feet. I sized her up, imagined myself perched on her nose watching the tide roll in and out, and raised my hand. Sold! I got her in the water, motored her upriver to my acre of land, and dropped anchor in water deep enough not to ground her when the tide ran out. She sits about eighty yards offshore, which means when I tell people I live on the water, I'm not kidding.

Unc sat in a black, four-door 1970-something Cadillac hearse pulling a double-axle trailer he'd bought at a U-Haul auction. As a farrier, he uses the trailer as his workshop and his h...

From AudioFile
Andrew Petersons mellow vocal personality enhances his narration of this warm drama, complete with a well-performed multiplicity of quirky characters. The story centers around Snoot, a mute autistic boy whose mother kicked him out of the car just before she committed suicide by running it into a train. Peterson uses vocal sounds and descriptions of hand gestures to portray Snoots high intelligence--he plays chess--and artistic ability. His depiction of Chase Walker, a news reporter who is intrigued by Snoots unfolding story, is performed with empathy and sensitivity. As the emotional pitch ratchets up with the plot, Peterson perfectly renders a believable story the listener wont soon forget. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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Customer Reviews

Another wonderful book from Charles Martin
Charles Martin's books contain beautiful prose, quirky characters, and vivid settings. He creates a world of believable, if unusual, characters and gently invites the reader in.

In this book, Chase Walker, who was abandoned and adopted by a man he calls "Unc", is assigned to write a story about another young boy who has likewise been abandoned. The boy is mute which makes it all the more challenging for Chase to piece together his background. Chase and Unc work together to show the boy that he is loved and accepted.

Although Unc is the most interesting character, there is also Chase's cousin Tommye, Unc's ruthless brother Jack, and the young boy to round out the cast of characters. The book shows what family and forgiveness are all about and will certainly be a favorite for Charles Martin's many fans.

Exceptional reading!
Charles Martin touched my soul with his book of the heart, When Cricket's Cry. With Chasing Fireflies he has awakened hope and joy. Charles' prose is exceptional and his characters connected with my emotions in ways few authors can achieve. This is a beautiful story of one man's journey for his identity, a boy's ability to communicate without words and the honour and integrity of a man willing to make a lifelong sacrifice for those he loves. Charles' books are in a league of their own and this hardcover novel is well worth the extra investment.

Another Grand Slam by Charles Martin!
Just when I think his books can't get any better -- he writes another one! The characters in this book are so well established -- so many details but never "too" many. Twists & turns;laughs & tears. Charles Martin is one of the best authors I have ever read. If you read one book this summer -- it should be this one. If you read 5 -- it should be this one plus his 4 others.