Finding Sagrado

Book excerpt: A Teenage Odyssey for Adults and Mature Teenage Readers: Selected for the "Albuquerque Easy Reading Parade" (Peter Kelton, March 21, 2014): Five stars from the "San Francisco Book Review Magazine" (for the August issue): Five stars from "Midwest Reviews" (Diane Donovan, May 2014): Roger E. Carrier tells an engaging story of youth, redemption, and sexual coming of age in New Mexico. In 1971, seventeen-year-old Shane Russell makes a well-planned escape from a Michigan winter and sets off on a 2,000-mile bus trip in search of a town that exists only between the covers of Richard Bradford's famous New Mexico novel Red Sky at Morning. Driven to recreate the nude scenes and build the mini Mount Rushmore in Bradford's fictional town of Sagrado, Shane forever touches the lives of his widowed landlady, the detective hired to find him, and his new friends at a colorful high school deep in the Land of Enchantment. Against the backdrop of his father's death in Vietnam and life with his stepmother's new boyfriend, Shane flees the painful realities of his life. In doing so, he finds a place where bats fly and love heals the wounds of the human spirit. Shane's sexual coming-of-age with Sandra (his new girlfriend) is both as funny and profound as youth. Become a teenager again in this rare story about the triumph of the human spirit over grief, the great adversary we all must face. The message of the novel is summarized in two words — "Keep Trying."