The Bloom of Youth
EK Jonathan
eBook
(, Sept. 29, 2018)
====An excerpt from the book:====Everything about that night was weird. I mean everything.There we were, sitting at a booth in Jimmyâs Steakhouse, our favorite restaurant in all of Boulder, Colorado, like it was the most normal thing in the entire world. Only, it wasnât. Not for our family, you see, because it was a weeknight, and we never went out on weeknights. Weâd just finished the Thursday night meeting and Dad had suspiciously suggested we go out for dinner and Mom hadnât said anything about us having school the next day, or the need to get in bed at a reasonable hour, or raised any number of sensible Mom-like objections, and so there we were.Also strange: the faces Mom and Dad kept making at each other during dinner. These were not normal faces. In fact, they kind of looked like the weâre-so-sorry-Will-but-weâve-decided-to-euthanize-your-beloved-pet-hamster-Mr-Pickles-because-that-kidney-of-his-just-isnât-getting-any-better faces burned into my memory from a few years back. (Actually, it was more than just a few years probably because I was about seven at the time of the Mr. Pickles incident but I guess that gives you an idea of how traumatic that experience had been, and just the fact that these current expressions reminded me of those expressions was putting my pulse at dangerous levels.)Alarm bells were ringing in my skull. There was a storm brewing on the horizon and everything told me to run.The other bizarre thing worth mentioning was that Mom was letting me have a mint chocolate malt after dinner when I knew she was concerned about my weight. It had gotten to the point where if she even heard me opening the refrigerator, she would yell out some conspicuous thing like how there was a bag of apples or grapes in the cupboard and some low fat granola bars, and didnât that just sound delicious? Sheâd also recently taken the drastic measure of replacing all the actually good-tasting cereals in our homeâlike Capân Crunch, Fruit Loops, and Cocoa Puffsâwith generic healthy ones that were basically just ground up wicker furniture.So there I was, just chewing and swallowing my food and looking at my parents being awkward. It was 2002 and I was fifteen years old and wise to the ways parents have of dropping bad news on their kids, and all the signs were there in full force. Sophie, on the other hand, was as happy as could be, just a blissful little nine-year-old thrilled out of her mind to be having ice cream past ten oâclock on a Thursday night. As I wiped the last steak fry in my malt glass and prepared to throw it in my mouth, Dad started to speak. The storm had arrived.âSo, William. SophiaâŚâ Dad does this thing when heâs trying to seem cool and relaxed where he leans back and crosses his legs and maybe undoes the top two buttons on his shirt and just really overdoes the whole casual thing...====Reviews & comments from readers:====âAnyone who reads "The Bloom of Youth" will be able to relive their own youth. The struggles of coming of age, the fact that we once thought our parents weren't as smart as we were, the first love interest, the true value of older mature friends, it all comes together in this story. It is well written and will certainly help any witness youth to give thought to where they are going with their life.â -John P. K., USAâI kind of surprised myself while reading this, not wanting to put it down... the perspective was refreshing and enlightening. As a father of a preteen young man, I feel I could identify with Willâs dad and really enjoyed having this window into their life.â -Rob M., USAâOne of those books that you finish and just have to tell a friend about, because you know they've been there too and will "get" it on so many levels. An entertaining read.â -Patrick O., Canada