Mike Maddock

Sunnybrook Mike Maddock

Before the Internet, cell phones, and club soccer, there was Sunnybrook. With just over 50,000 words, Sunnybrook is a work of fiction and a coming-of-age story that will make kids crave days without referees or rules and adults fondly recall being outside from dawn to dusk playing with friends and fireflies. In 1980, eleven-year-old Joey Moore was positive leaving his neighborhood at the end of the summer was going to be the worst thing that ever happened to him. He was wrong. After his parents told him he was moving, Joey sprinted from his house fully prepared to cry himself to sleep on the trails of the undeveloped lot he and his friends usually tore through on their Schwinn BMX Scramblers. Instead, he found his best friend, Chris, drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick. That fateful evening as the crickets chirped and the aroma of backyard grills filled the air, Joey and Chris decided their last summer together would be legendary. With the help of the entire neighborhood gang, they would avenge every dog that had ever been hurt by Old Lady Callahan and her Pinto of death. They would find that stash of dirty magazines supposedly hidden deep in the surrounding woods. Joey would kiss Jamie Hollins, the best looking girl ever to throw a tight spiral, and he would forge his name in the history books as the only person to ride a skateboard all the way down Sunnybrook Lane. But as Joey built his legend, his parents' marriage crumbled and moving was only part of their story. Joey's toughest task was yet to come.