{"product_id":"the-collective-isbn-9781782692171","title":"The Collective","description":"\u003cb\u003eA dramatic coming-of-age novel about a boy's divided loyalty: can Elwyn resist the pull of tradition as well as the allure of the new to forge his own path?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs spring comes to Badfish Creek, the natural world bursts with life and excitement. But Elwyn is dreaming of a different change, of a place far away that he hasn't yet seen. Lured by urban life and all it has to offer - education, progress and opportunity - he doesn't think twice when his uncle invites him to stay in Liberty, a dazzling city he longs to call home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet soon Elwyn realizes that all that glitters is not gold: there is a sinister side to Liberty that he can't ignore, which threatens to erase his old way of life completely. With past and present pitted against one another, the path to Elwyn's future is cast in doubt - for change always comes at a price.   • 'A great teenage read; deep and meaningful' \u003ci\u003eMr Ripley's Enchanted Books\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e   • 'Addictive' \u003ci\u003eIndependent Book Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e   • 'Intelligent and thought-provoking' \u003ci\u003eRead it Daddy\u003c\/i\u003eLindsey  Whitlock is a Midwestern writer preoccupied by places, people and how  to live well. She writes from Madison Wisconsin, where she lives with  her husband and three children. \u003ci\u003eThe Collective\u003c\/i\u003e is her debut novel.CHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003e Pigeon Spring\u003cbr\u003e The year Elwy n left home was a Pigeon Spring in\u003cbr\u003e Badfish Creek. Every seven years, the birds would come,\u003cbr\u003e darkening the sky like a plague of Egypt. But this was the\u003cbr\u003e New World, not the Old. The birds didn’t bring fear or\u003cbr\u003e destruction. The birds brought excitement, like a coming\u003cbr\u003e storm. The hunting equipment wasn’t the best; everyone\u003cbr\u003e used what they had. A lucky few carried shotguns. The\u003cbr\u003e rest carried slings, arrows, throwing sticks. Nets stretched\u003cbr\u003e from tree to tree. They filled with birds like bugs fill a\u003cbr\u003e screen, while children carried baskets around their necks\u003cbr\u003e and caught the birds as they fell from the sky. The filled\u003cbr\u003e baskets were dumped into a wagon, and the wagon was\u003cbr\u003e carried to Kegonsa, where the birds were gutted and bled\u003cbr\u003e and shipped by train south-west to St Louis and east along\u003cbr\u003e the Laurentian cities as far as Philadelphia.\u003cbr\u003e They got three dollars for every bird, and the feeling\u003cbr\u003e of wealth poured into town before the money did. That\u003cbr\u003e summer, people would build homes, pay off debts, get\u003cbr\u003e married. For years, the forest floor would be fertile, fertile\u003cbr\u003e enough to grow the pumpkins whose vines were trained\u003cbr\u003e to climb the cottonwoods where the shade wasn’t strong.\u003cbr\u003e That first year, the pumpkins would grow so large, they\u003cbr\u003e would need to be held up with ropes.\u003cbr\u003e It was a Pigeon Spring, and Badfish Creek ignited with\u003cbr\u003e excitement as the first shots were fired, and the sky grew\u003cbr\u003e darker and darker with fluttering bodies. Elwyn’s arm\u003cbr\u003e whirled, his sling hurling stones that felled four passenger\u003cbr\u003e pigeons at a time, just like his father had taught him, and\u003cbr\u003e his father before him, and his father before that, on and\u003cbr\u003e on back seven generations to Samuel Bramble, one of the\u003cbr\u003e rebel slaves who fought in the Second American War before\u003cbr\u003e settling down in Badfish Creek among French mountain\u003cbr\u003e men and misfits. But even though Elwyn’s ears were full\u003cbr\u003e of the roar of wings, even though the birds dropped from\u003cbr\u003e the sky, even though the thrill of the hunt was pumping\u003cbr\u003e through his body, below all that, Elwyn felt a restlessness.\u003cbr\u003e The restlessness had been growing all winter, maybe all\u003cbr\u003e his life.\u003cbr\u003e When the last birds were shipped, men and women\u003cbr\u003e jumped into the still-icy creek to rinse the sweat, blood and\u003cbr\u003e feathers from their bodies. Children were washed in basins\u003cbr\u003e of warm well-water and oak bark; brothers and sisters with\u003cbr\u003e all shades of pale and dark young skin stood gleaming while\u003cbr\u003e they waited to be inspected by their mothers. Everyone was\u003cbr\u003e vigorously dried, believing wet ears meant illness, and wet\u003cbr\u003e feet drew bad spirits. Then as the sun went down and the\u003cbr\u003e bonfires were lit, people gathered close, wrapped in blankets\u003cbr\u003e and coats, roasting game as they always did, and singing and\u003cbr\u003e playing, flirting, minding babies. On that celebratory day,\u003cbr\u003e many bottles were opened and passed. Old Finchy opened\u003cbr\u003e a cask of the mead she was famous for as the singing grew\u003cbr\u003e louder and more joyful, more boisterous. Children played\u003cbr\u003e late into the night while young mothers nursed and got a\u003cbr\u003e chance to dream, for once, of the things they would buy.\u003cbr\u003e While Badfish Creek celebrated its fortune, Elwyn\u003cbr\u003e wasn’t with the others. Instead, he was alone in his room –\u003cbr\u003e an unusual thing for a boy who normally revelled in festival\u003cbr\u003e atmospheres. Like the other Badfishians, his head was full\u003cbr\u003e of dreams, but they were dreams of a different quality.\u003cbr\u003e In the light of a candle, his pen flew across the page, but\u003cbr\u003e no matter how fast Elwyn wrote, his hand couldn’t keep\u003cbr\u003e up with words racing through his mind. He kept making\u003cbr\u003e mistakes, having to restart. He wanted the letter to be as\u003cbr\u003e great as the ambitions rising in him. He wanted it to be\u003cbr\u003e perfect. It was possible that this one letter, addressed to\u003cbr\u003e an aunt he had never spoken to, in a town he had never\u003cbr\u003e visited, could change the course of his whole life. And\u003cbr\u003e perhaps it did.\u003cbr\u003e It was a letter asking his Aunt Piety if he could come\u003cbr\u003e and live with her. He sent it first thing the next morning,\u003cbr\u003e and for weeks after, Elwyn’s life hinged on visits to the post\u003cbr\u003e office, where he checked in once, twice, sometimes three\u003cbr\u003e times a day to see if anything had arrived for him; there\u003cbr\u003e were no home deliveries in that part of the Collective, and\u003cbr\u003e the train that carried mail was unreliable. Elwyn’s mood\u003cbr\u003e rose and fell with these visits, with the shake of Postman\u003cbr\u003e Wilder’s head. And every day, it seemed more important\u003cbr\u003e to Elwyn that the letter arrive, not less. He realised that\u003cbr\u003e leaving Badfish Creek – leaving soon, making something\u003cbr\u003e of himself – was the pivotal thing, was what his life had\u003cbr\u003e been building towards.\u003cbr\u003e But as often happens, the day the letter arrived was\u003cbr\u003e the one day Elwyn neglected his morning visit to the post\u003cbr\u003e office – his brother Allun had convinced him the morning\u003cbr\u003e would be better spent out fishing; the bass were biting.\u003cbr\u003e Later, hungry from the fresh air and industry, Elwyn sat at\u003cbr\u003e the kitchen table reading a book and eating acorn bread\u003cbr\u003e while his mother swept the floor. When Mirth Bramble\u003cbr\u003e cleaned, her arms looked like the legs of a draught horse:\u003cbr\u003e strong, deliberate. Crumbs fell down around Elwyn as he\u003cbr\u003e read, but for once, Mirth didn’t seem to see them. She\u003cbr\u003e glanced at the small stack of mail on the counter and then\u003cbr\u003e back at her son. After a few minutes, she stopped sweeping\u003cbr\u003e and took an envelope from the pile.","brand":"Pushkin Children's Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304332153061,"sku":"NP9781782692171","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782692171.jpg?v=1767738742","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-collective-isbn-9781782692171","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}