Summer Haze

Summer Haze

Three gifted musicians rise up out of tragic childhoods that included verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by their fathers. Digger, Chip, and Aria put their pasts behind them, blend their talents together, and achieve stardom on the stage in the songs they write and perform. Digger is verbally and physically abused by his father, the owner of a mortuary who forces his son to play hymns at services to soothe mourners as repayment for his piano lessons. Chip’s father is sent to jail for murdering his mother, and Chip must abandon his beloved dog and home to live in a trailer in the mountains with his grandparents. Aria silently endures the nightly horror of rape by her father and seeks sanctuary in the church choir under the tutelage of a former country music star. Each finds comfort in music and devotes focus to their instrument—Digger, the keyboard; Chip, the guitar; and Aria, her voice.Best friends Digger and Chip find a drummer, start a band, and then hit the road. They play in dive bars throughout the South and casinos along the Gulf Coast. The trio catches the eye of an agent, Eli Bowditch, who lures them to Nashville—Music City USA! Eli adds the beautiful blonde singer, Aria, to the boys’ band, changes its name to Summer Haze, and sends them on tour. Performance by performance, success comes, but resentment, jealousy, and suspicion threaten to fracture the band. The novel Summer Haze is a coming of age of three youths—their bond of creative talent and skills mixed with friendship, their struggle for success and against infighting, and their handling of fame followed by loss. "From one of the best opening lines in a novel I've ever read to the killer ending, Michael Tucker's Summer Haze had me. This captivating slice of life on the road to stardom accurately nails the psyche of the struggling musician/songwriter. You'll discover an easy read with believable characters and a story sure to tug at your heart strings."Tom Pallardy, author, musician, songwriter, producer. Michael J. Tucker grew up in the cold northern climate of Pittsburgh, PA, and an only child, he was often trapped indoors and left to his own devices, where he would create space ships out of cardboard boxes, convert his mother's ironing board into a horse and put on his Sunday suit and tie and his father's fedora and become a newspaper reporter or police detective. This experience left him with an unlimited imagination and the ability to write electrifying short stories and novels. Mike is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Aquarius Falling and Capricorn's Collapse . His published short stories available on Amazon are: Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon , The New Neighbor , The Hemingway Notes , The King's Man , I Should Have Bought That Thing, What I Did Last Summer, The Price of Copper,  and the Amazon best selling short story series, Katie Savage , and The Gardner Painting: A Katie Savage Story . In addition to his poetry collection, Y our Voice Spoke To My Ear , his work also appears in the Civil War Anthology, Filtered Through Time , and By Blood or By Marriage , a Harpeth River Writers Anthology.