Melding Spirits

Melding Spirits

Twelve-year-old Evan Mason’s life has been turned upside down by the sudden death of his father. His mother isn’t home much, the insurance office during the day, waiting tables at night. Evan is spending a great deal of time alone.Now he finds himself on a Greyhound bus headed for a small town on the Wabash River where he’ll spend the summer of 1958 with his loving grandmother. Evan soon meets his new neighbor, Katie Dobbins. She’s a feisty blue-eyed girl with a ponytail, the type of girl Buddy Holly might sing about on American Bandstand. Evan is instantly enamored with her.It seems the perfect summer is underway—but strange things are happening in the woods surrounding the Ghost Hill Indian Mound.There’s a dark cloud lingering over the Wabash Valley—It won’t be long before it erupts into a raging storm. Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer With "Melding Spirits", Michael Burge crafts a poignant coming-of-age story laced with suspense and grit. Crossing genres, this story is sure to appeal to a wide audience. The characters are an eclectic mix who work well together. Evan Mason, the twelve-year-old protagonist, is on the cusp of teenagerhood, that magical age in which innocence and naiveté still reign, and this is captured in his interactions with his friends and especially with his relationship with Katie Dobbins, his first love. Both are mature for their age, which is refreshing. The neighborhood is comprised of quirky, unique individuals who augment the plot and add humor as well as creative tension. There is a timeless quality to the narrative, and although the setting is 1958 in Laurenville, Illinois, it could be anyone's hometown, which further immerses the reader in the experience. Don't let the seeming tranquility lull you into complacency, however. As quaint as this story is, there is just enough roughness around the edges to add grit, a discreet thread of mystery that develops slowly and then suddenly rises to a crescendo. Most authors would present both the light and dark elements together or at least simultaneously from the start, and in breaking from this tradition, Burge keeps the reader guessing and achieves an exhilarating climax toward the end of the novel. Aside from some profanity, this is a relatively clean read, with no graphic details or bedroom scenes, and I recommend it as a fantastic summer read. Sarah Snider, For the Love of Literature, BookLikes SETTING -- A MAJOR ELEMENT IN A STORY My current novel,  Melding  Spirits  is set in 1958, and  Bryant's Gap , my debut novel, 1947. Shortly after  Bryant's Gap  was published, I was having lunch with a friend. He isn't an avid reader, but I handed him a copy of the book, hoping he might someday be inspired to read it. He glanced at the back cover and asked, "Why 1947?"     It was a good question. In fact, the story could just as easily have played out in a contemporary setting, but I wanted to take the reader back to a simpler time, before the advent of computers, the Internet, smart phones, and video games.      I believe Spencer Tracy, as the character Henry Drummond in the 1960 film  Inherit the Wind ,  said it best in his courtroom argument --" Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, 'All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'"    I have embraced technology throughout my life; my career revolved around it. I was engaged with computers when IBM was the only girl in town, and Hollerith cards (cards with holes punched into them) were used to input data. I currently do my research on the Internet, write my manuscripts on a PC, and conduct business on my smart-phone. Technology is a wonderful thing, but it has substantially changed society, the way people interact.    That's why, at least for now, I will jump into my  time machine  and venture back to the past to tell my stories. Sometimes . . . simpler is better. Twelve-year-old Evan Mason's life has been turned upside down by the sudden death of his father. His mother isn't home much, the insurance office during the day, waiting tables at night. Evan is spending a great deal of time alone. Now he finds himself on a Greyhound bus headed for a small town on the Wabash River where he'll spend the summer of 1958 with his loving grandmother. Evan soon meets his new neighbor, Katie Dobbins. She's a feisty blue-eyed girl with a ponytail, the type of girl Buddy Holly might sing about on American Bandstand. Evan is instantly enamored with her.It seems the perfect summer is underway--but strange things are happening in the woods surrounding the Ghost Hill Indian Mound.There's a dark cloud lingering over the Wabash Valley--It won't be long before it