Fire in the Rock (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

In the summer of ’56, in a small southern town, sixteen-year-old Bo Fisher thought he had it made. With an easy job, the use of a truck, and plenty of free time to spend with lovely, long-legged Mae Maude and contagiously energetic Pollo, the season seemed to stretch before him like a dream. For a preacher’s son, it was a startling whiff of independence: a rare opportunity to hang around people his parents didn’t pick out for him. And though he had to mind the rules of propriety, Bo didn’t think twice about befriending Pollo, who just so happened to be black. Of course, not everyone was so open-minded. After a terrible incident cuts short the youthful carelessness of the summer, Bo assumed he would never see Pollo or Mae Maude again. But ten years later, trouble brings the two men together once more—older, wiser, changed. And in order to save the future for one of them, the haunting events of that time long ago must be unearthed.