My books are also available at IndieBound.
The Arkansas Oil Days Series is about stories addressing life’s chaos and plots seeking answers, daring you to turn just one more page.
The books tell the story of Hank Baker and his friends in the Frenchport community of Farmville in South Arkansas during the oil boom days. Set in 1925, these kids deal with life in the region of the Smackover oil fields where millions of gallons of oil were pumped, supplying the world with fuel from the largest oil field ever discovered to date. Each installment of the series is a stand-alone novel while connected with the characters, setting, and time period.
Hank is the main character who is dealing with a number of issues he needs to work through in the stories. He engages his two best friends Daniel and Beth Ann to help him solve mysteries that guide him to find answers to his own complicated life. Eventually, the group adds a new friend to join them in solving puzzles and who leads them through tough decision making that shapes all their characters for thriving in an unfair society in an uncertain world. Even though Hank and his friends are twelve, their character qualities and manner of handling problems will help today’s youth of all ages deal with their emotions and with the choices they make to solve the chaos of their own lives with a different kind of approach than the current trends.
Readers learn age is not the focus of these books. The stories have multiple layers to the conflicts and don’t resolve everything because life is just not that neat and clean. What these kids face on a daily basis in 1925 is no different from what kids deal with on a daily basis currently. Each book in the series focuses on a different set of circumstances that guide the characters—and the readers—through the process of problem solving.
