Mothership

This middle-grade novel, looking like 75-80K words, is Lostine’s temporal prequel.

Mothership is narrated by the same kid as in Lostine, but just about a year younger, trying to adapt to a different town, with mostly different reasons to feel isolated. He is getting spun all over the place by:

• His realization that he is responsible for an old, one-eyed homeless man’s one-eyedness.

• His unpredictable neighborhood friends Fizz and Late.

• His mother getting involved with their landlord, while his dad is M.I.A. nearly a year.

• The state of war he is waging with a neighborhood faction he calls “Them”.

• His regular habit of throwing rocks at bums standing in the doorways of boxcars speeding by in mile-long, Seattle-bound freights.

• Gold fever hot as that of the men he has to outwit for it.