Next Week's Graduate

In his seductive and poignant new novel, Terry Gavin, the author of "Shaving Without a Razor" and "When Men Are Young," returns to the Midwest, a region whose moral ambivalence he continues to explore. The time is the late eighties. Two teenagers, Mike Warner and Tommy Alvin, are upon a new decade and new lives; their voices envelop readers with the pneumatic backbeat of spirited dialogue and heartwarming circumstance. As Mike takes off one week before his high school graduation, he crosses paths with nineteen-year-old Tommy, a man who dreams of superstardom yet lacks the will to take the first step.

The youths navigate the treacherous yet exhilarating waters of change, sometimes with success, other times with heartbreaking failure. In short, the two characters are connected in the only way people can be when fate brings them together and plays its inevitable game of chance.