Eli the Good »

Silas House is the nationally best-selling author of the award-winning novels CLAY'S QUILT, A PARCHMENT OF LEAVES, and THE COAL TATTOO. He serves as writer-in-residence at Lincoln Memorial University and lives in eastern Kentucky with two daughters and two dogs.

From the Hardcover edition.

In his timely YA debut, a best-selling novelist revisits a summer of tumult and truth for a young narrator and his war-torn family.

Bicentennial fireworks burn the sky. Bob Seger growls from a transistor radio. And down by the river, girls line up on lawn chairs in pursuit of the perfect tan. Yet for ten-year-old Eli Book, the summer of 1976 is the one that threatened to tear his family apart. There is his distant mother; his traumatized Vietnam vet dad; his wild sister; his former warprotester aunt; and his tough yet troubled best friend, Edie, the only person with whom he can be himself. As tempers flare and his father’s nightmares rage, Eli watches from the sidelines, but soon even he cannot escape the current of conflict. From Silas House comes a tender look at the complexities of childhood and the realities of war — a quintessentially Southern novel filled with music, nostalgic detail, a deep respect for nature, and a powerful sense of place.

From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

In his YA debut, adult author House tells the story of a smalltown family reeling from the Vietnam War. The narrator, Eli Book, describes the summer of 1976, when he was 10 years old, with the hindsight and perspective that adulthood brings (“It's important that you know this: my mother was beautiful.... She must have driven the boys at the high school absolutely crazy”). Eli lives with his father (a traumatized Vietnam vet); his loving but distant mother; a rebellious teenage sister; and his outspoken antiwar activist aunt. The candid conversations between Eli and his best friend, Edie, underscore the turmoil in both of their households. House laces the book with references to Bob Seger and Happy Days, but keeps the focus on the family's crackling dynamics and Eli's struggle to make sense of them. There's subtle poetry at work in House's writing, and as the tension and summer months heat up (“The sun broiled on the sky, a living thing that pulsated and grew larger”), Eli comes to understand how love and forgiveness can overcome even the most deep-seated conflicts. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)