An Early Harvest

The United States in 1960 sat teetering on the brink of a social, cultural, and technological revolution, but in Abel, N.C., life continued more or less as it always had, with only subtle hints of the landslides of change that were on the horizon-just beyond the town limits. For 12-year-old Sonny Miller, 1960 was a year of incredible personal growth and devastating loss. From taking his first job and finding his first love, to enduring bitter tragedy, Sonny encounters the best and most noble qualities to be found in a small, southern town, but for the first time, he comes face to face with a provincial ugliness that threatens his family and his sense of self. An Early Harvest follows the narrative tradition set out in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird of telling the most profound and evocative stories of Southern American life through the eyes and voices of children. And Sonny's story, which is often intimate, painful, and humorous, is also the story of the old American South as it set out-naively, haltingly, and inexorably-toward becoming something new.