List price: $4.95
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-0974648101
Publisher: Brown Barn Books

     "I had been in New York City less than twenty-four hours and I had already met my first Jew and my first artist...I'd met a Miss America who'd danced the fandango with the King of the Hottentots. Whether or not this had actually happened was still unclear...I'd met a Nobel Prize-winning author who'd been imprisoned in a gulag...
     And although I did not even know her name, I'd met a red-haired usherette at the Radio City Music hall and fallen desperately in love.
     If any one of these things had ever happened to me in Eula, Texas, I would probably have spent the rest of my life setting and whittling under the wooden overhangs of Main Street, telling and retelling the story, but all of this had happened to me in less than a day in New York City."

     Chance Bailey, nearly sixteen, is itching to escape the dusty, depressed West Texas town where he and his mother have scraped by since Harry Bailey failed to return from the Second World War. When a letter postmarked New York City from the long-absent husband and father finally arrives, Chance loses no time in heading for the bright lights. Both the rural Western locale where the story opens and the hectic streets of Manhattan where most of the action takes place are vividly portrayed and populated by a rich variety of picturesque local characters. From the saloon-keeper who teaches him how to spot a bottom-dealing card cheat, to the down-an-out Russian novelist whom Chance befriends in a crumbling YMCA, each encounter adds to the boy’s growing self-assurance. With luck and courage, Chance rises out of poverty and obscurity and finds his life intertwined with those of wealthy, eccentric, and dangerous denizens of Manhattan. While uncovering mysteries surrounding his elusive father, Chance falls in love, risks all, and experiences undreamed-of success as well as painful loss.

     LeMoult’s first book for young adults is an absorbing coming-of-age story of a country boy who journeys to the Big Apple seeking his father and his fortune and who finds all that and much more. Plausibility is sacrificed for climactic fireworks as the plot shifts from realism to melodrama in the final chapters, but Chance’s steady, engaging narrative voice holds the reader’s attention throughout.
                                              – Walter Hogan, February 2005, VOYA

Dolph LeMoult has enjoyed a successful career as a novelist, advertising copywriter and creative director, illustrator, and gallery painter. His series of police novels, co-authored with NYPD Detective Bill Kelly, has attracted an avid, loyal readership. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection, his Rock Solid won the acclaim of critics. He has participated in writing seminars and in television and radio talk shows. As a guest lecturer at schools and colleges, he speaks of the value and satisfaction of writing life and entreats fledgling writers to follow their dreams.

     The wind had picked up, driving horizontal gusts in our faces as we wandered the rain-swept streets of lower Manhattan . Molly carried the carton containing her dog Trixie's body and I went along, not really understanding her need at that time but not willing to question it. I followed her because of the two of us, she seemed the least terrified, her face expressionless in the torrent of rain and wind, plodding into certain danger like the drug-reconstituted infantrymen at the Battle of the Bulge. Above us, the gray, slotted sky gave no indication of easing the onslaught.
     "Maybe we should get inside until it stops raining," I suggested. "It's not helping anything getting her soaked this way."
     "I have to find a place for her. I can't just leave her in an alleyway or drop her off a bridge," Molly insisted.
     "Just a minute until we catch our breath..."
     I darted beneath an arched brick overhang at the edge of the sidewalk where a small gold plaque identified the premises as Chapel of the Little Flower, R. C.
     "It's a church. I want to go in and say a prayer for Trixie," Molly decided.
     "It's a Roman church. I didn't know you were Catholic."
     "I'm not but something brought us here. It just feels right."
     Inside, we walked uncertainly down the center aisle of the church and sat in one of the pews. I had never been inside a Roman church before and. had no great desire to be in one now, having heard all manner of things about them back in Eula. It was said they sacrificed Christian babies to the Pope, and while I suspected that was an exaggeration, I had little reason to think there were not other blood-curdling rituals going on in there. The specter of white plaster statues looming from every niche and corner did little to ease my anxiety, and I crouched in nervous anticipation as a slightly built man wearing corduroy pants and a sweatshirt approached us. "I'm Father Troy Blaze," he introduced himself. "Can I be of help?"
     "We were hoping we could just sit here for a few minutes," Molly said.
     "We've just had a death," I added.
     He smiled a beatific smile. "Stay as long as you like. Perhaps you'd like to come back to the rectory and chat a bit when you've finished. Sometimes it helps to talk to someone about it."
     "Do you think you could say some words over Trixie's body?" Molly asked uncertainly.
     "I don't see why not. Is the deceased somewhere nearby?"
     Molly opened the carton flaps. "I've had her since she was a puppy, since I first came to New York ."
     Father Troy Blaze nodded sympathetically. "Is there any particular prayer you'd like me to say?"
     "Whatever you usually say."
He lifted the carton from the pew and placed it in the aisle, then took a well-worn prayer book from his hip pocket and thumbed through it. "Her name is Trixie?"
     "She's a Yorkshire terrier."
     He settled on a passage: "Lord we beseech you to take the soul of your small servant, Trixie, loyal companion and friend to all since she was a puppy. Forgive her what sins a Yorkshire terrier can commit and grant both her and her loved ones the blessing of eternal life in you, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, amen." He closed the book and blessed us with a silent sign of the cross.
     Billowing tears ran down Molly's cheeks. "Thank you," she said softly.
     "If you'd like, I can see to it that she's buried with dignity," he offered.
     "Could I spend a few minutes alone with her before you take her?"
     "Take as much time as you need. I'll be in back behind the sacristy when you're ready."
I don't know why, but I followed him, down the church aisle and through an open door to a back room. "I didn't know you could do that," I said when we were alone. "I'm a Baptist and you wouldn't see a preacher saying words over a dead animal."
     "Well, we're all God's creatures." He took a bottle of sacramental wine from a shelf and poured some into a paper cup. "Care for a snort?"
     "Why not? I'm soaked to the skin.
     "Technically, I'm not supposed to perform services for animals either, but this wouldn't be the first time I've taken an unorthodox approach to Christianity." He handed me a cup filled with wine. "I'm kind of a renegade when it comes to orthodoxy; but then, my congregants are out of the ordinary; gay men and lesbians for the most part. Around these parts I'm called the faggot priest."
     "Don't you mind that?"
     "Why should I? They're my people. I love them all."
     I sipped the wine and found it smooth and sweet. "It's strange being here. This is my first time in a Roman church," I admitted.
     "You're a Baptist?"
     "Well I reckon that's what I'd be if they were choosing up sides, but I'm not even sure I believe in God."
     "Me either," he shrugged.
    "But you're a priest. Why would somebody want to be a priest if they didn't believe in God?"
     "Because it's the most rewarding job I can think of. I don't think it really matters what one believes as long as they feel they're making a contribution."
     "I reckon I never thought about it that way. The way I was fetched up nobody dared question God, nobody even questioned that he was a Baptist. You just plain worshipped him and left the questions to the unchaste."
     "Maybe he is a Baptist," Troy Blaze laughed. "Of course a lot of Catholics might take issue with that. My own feeling is that God is universality, that part in each of us that reaches out to help. I've never been much of a believer in a God who has such low self esteem that he demands to be worshipped all the time."
     "I have a friend, Shimmelman, who thinks that everything there is, all the worlds and suns and galaxies, are just a speck on God's eyelash. He says if God had a mind to blink that'd be all there was to that."
     "I'd like to meet your friend. He sounds like a stimulating individual."
     "He's not Catholic either. He's a Jew."
     "Christ was a Jew."
     "Shimmelman thinks we can create our own universes. He creates his by painting it on the wall, but he thinks you and I find our own way to do the same thing."
     "If he means that we can create our own reality I agree with him."
     "He thinks reality is the hobgoblin of dolts and incompetents, that madmen have an edge in life because they're not hobble-tied by it. He says their madness is just a wormhole to another divinity."
     Troy Blaze nodded. "It's a compelling idea; as good a theory as I could come up with. The church has always preached that we're touched by the divine -- that we're all a part of the mystical body of Christ, although I'll have to admit they don't always practice what they preach. My congregants would have something to say, about that."
     I finished my wine and he refilled both our cups. "Do you think a dog can sin?" I asked him.
     "I guess that depends on what you mean by sin. If your friend is right and we're all divinities in our own right, I doubt that the concept of sin has any validity at all."
    "I wish I could believe that."
     "Why?"
     "Because I think there's a part of me that's wild and sinful, something in my Comanche blood maybe. Whatever it is I've caused a lot of folks trouble."
Troy Blaze thought a bit. "I'd hear your confession if you thought it would help."
     "I thought only Catholics could do that."
     "Like I said, I'm not much on orthodoxy."
     "What am I supposed to do?"
     "Why not start by telling me what's bothering you?"
     I took a deep, uncertain breath. "First of all there's Joe Carl Purdy," I began. "Joe Carl was my best friend back in Texas before he went to the hospital up in Lubbock for an operation to straighten his spine. I wished him good luck and all, but deep down inside I was hoping the operation would fail because it would've made him as tall as me, and I wanted to be the tall one. Then it failed and Joe Carl died, and every day I wake up I know it was my fault.
     "And there's Mama. She's married to a preacher name of Harley Brown who beats her. I don't just think he beats her, I know he does, but I made myself believe I wasn't sure because I didn't really see him doing it, just the bruises afterward. I know it was wrong not to stay there and protect her, but I had to get out. I couldn't stand the stink and the heat so I left her with him and now she's there and I'm here, and if I close my eyes and think hard about other things I can almost believe it's not really happening.
     "Then there's Molly and me, we're running away from a gangster named Nick Corsi who thinks he owns her. I made a deal with him not to see her, but I went back on my word and, pardon my French, but all hell broke loose. The Cajun tried to help me get her a way and Nick Corsi had two men drown him in the pool at the Soldiers and Sailors, and now he's gone and killed Trixie, and none of it would have happened if I'd lived up to my part of the bargain..."
     "How old are you?" Troy Blaze broke in.
     "Just sixteen, but everybody thinks I'm nineteen."
     "You've taken on a lot of guilt for someone only sixteen."
     "There's a lot to be guilty about."
     "Have you spoken to anyone else about this?"
     "I might've run it by God, but him and me being on the outs and all, I didn't figure it would do much good."
     "It will now. God is listening to you now," he assured me.
     "How do you know that?"
     "It doesn't matter." Troy Blaze placed a hand on my shoulder and. closed his eyes. "I absolve you of guilt, fear, soul-searching and second-guessing, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
     "That's it?"
     "That's it."
     "Will it work?"
     "That's up to you."
     "What about God?"
     "God helps those who help themselves." He led me out into the church where Molly was waiting.