The Summer I Went Crazy - Book Tour and Giveaway

The summer I went crazy happened forty years ago when I was just seventeen, but I've never forgotten.

It started with rape and ended with a promise. In between I fell in love, broke the law, and made an irrevocable decision. 
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The Summer I Went Crazy
by Laura Koerber
Genre: Coming of Age, YA Literary Fiction

The rule for guys like me was that we'd grow up to be like our parents. Our parents put a lot of work and money into making sure we did. I got it all: the expensive private school education, the summers in Europe, the family connections to a congressman and other influential people, an admission to Yale. I was fast tracked for success.

Instead, I became the witness to a rape.

And I fell in love, broke a bunch of laws, made an irrevocable decision, and made a lifetime promise.
And now, forty years later, I am making a phone call.

The Year I Went Crazy is a rewrite of an earlier novel, Coyote Summer. The plot is much the same, but Coyote Summer is a magical realism novel with a fantasy element, while The Summer I Went Crazy is straight realistic literary fiction about coming of age.

**TRIGGER WARNING – While not containing the direct decription of rape, it does describe dealing with the aftermath of rape and includes drug and alcohol abuse.


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​Chapter One: The Party, June, 1983

The rule was that Camden girls were all dogs. That’s what all the St. Andrew’s guys said. It wasn’t true; some, maybe even most, were pretty, but the guys joked about what dogs they were anyway. Camden girls went to public school, so they had to be dogs.
We were all real studs, of course. Healthy in body and mind: athletic, scholarly, regular attendees at church, destined to be lawyers or CEOs or Congressmen. Or maybe doctors but not family practice. Some high paying specialty. We were going to pick up wives along the way from the stock available at an Ivy League college or a country club or something like that. And our wives would be pretty. At least for the first couple of years.
We were going grow up to be our parents. That was another rule.
So I kind of wondered why I was checking myself out so carefully in the mirror. My hair was combed, I had no obvious zits, and I’d applied deodorant. I looked like a prep school kid. I liked looking like a prep school kid because I was a prep school kid, but something was bugging me.
I wasn’t very tall. Maybe that was it.
Clint banged on my bedroom door, two thumps, like a code. He didn’t say anything. I grabbed my monogrammed leather jacket, a gift from my big sister. Her idea of macho, I think, intended to make me more impressive to the female gender. I slapped my butt to make one last wallet check. As long as I had my wallet, nothing could go too badly wrong.
Clint was sashaying down the hall like he lived in my house. Well, he’d been my best friend forever, and we were always running in and out of each other’s houses. I could tell by his loping, lopsided stride that he was drunk already. Him first, me behind, we galloped down the stairs.
On the way to the door, we passed the archway to the main living room, the big room at the front of the house. Neither of my parents was in there which meant they were down the hall in the den or the TV room. I leaned around the door and hollered, “Hey, I’m off!” From the depths of the house, my mom shouted back, “Have fun!” Clint and I were on our way to a party. Not a party with anyone I would know. Someone had invited Clint, and Clint had invited the rest of us.
By “us” I mean me, Marty, and Rob. They were waiting in Clint’s car, having started the party off up in Clint’s room at his house with some hard liquor. I clambered into the nearly vestigial back seat, bumped shoulders with Rob, and got a nose full of his aftershave. Clint stomped on the gas, and we launched ourselves upon the world with a roar from the engine of his bright red Mustang.
I watched the big houses of our neighborhood flash by and morph into the brick store fronts of downtown Camden. The streets were wet and smeared with the colors of the streetlights and neon. Clint charged the yellow traffic lights and bullied his way through the bar crowd traffic. Once he got past downtown, he rammed the gas pedal down and we roared through a neighborhood of little white cottages, acres of them—student housing for the state university. I knew a grad of our school who lived somewhere out there in Outer Slobovia. He said he wanted to be a veterinarian, but really he just didn’t get very good grades at our school, so he had to go to a state U. We passed knots of students standing at the corners or walking around. Marty hollered out the window at them just to be obnoxious. One group responded with peace signs, and I saw a hand raised with a joint.
“Hey, they have some pot,” Marty yelled over the radio.
“What?” Clint yelled back.
“Those townies were going to give us some pot.”
“Plenty where we’re headed.”
We flew down the long slant to the river, accelerated across the bridge, and shot up the hill on the other side into the alien world of rural Wisconsin. Dairy farms. Or some other kinds of farms. Farms anyway. I was from Camden, but I didn’t know anything about farms except the obvious: They were spaced at regular intervals; each had a very, very bright light attached to the barn; and they were fenced. Because of cows, I assumed.
We hurtled through the darkness. Clint always drove like a fighter pilot, swooping and swerving. He got very relaxed and fluid when drunk, and I actually was not afraid he’d kill us. I just rolled around with the turns, first me leaning into Rob, then Rob leaning into me. Then Clint braked abruptly, aimed the car between fence posts, and we bounced up a dirt road to a yard packed with cars parked every which way around a shabby farm house.
I could tell right away that most of the kids were not from our school because the pickup trucks and cars looked like they belonged to somebody's mom or dad. Clint braked with a flourish, and the red Mustang came to a quivering halt, exhaling steam into the cool night air. We all disentangled ourselves and climbed out.
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Laura is an artist who lives on an island with her husband and her two dogs. She has always entertained herself by telling herself stories. As a child, she used to like going to bed because she could lie awake under the covers and run movies in her head. Later, as an adult, she enjoyed long distance driving for the opportunity to spend hours writing novels in her imagination.

Now Laura divides her retirement time between dog rescue, care for disabled people, political activism, and yes, she still tells herself stories while she is driving. Her first book, The Dog Thief and Other Stories, written under the pen name of Jill Kearney, was listed by Kirkus Review as one of the One Hundred Best Indy Books of 2015. She's also the author of I Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found, Limbo, The Eclipse Dancer, and Wild Hare. She has a story contribution in the book Rescue Smiles, too.

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 I became a writer because I stole a dog.

I sneaked up a dirt road through a forest in the dark—it was around three o'clock in the morning—with some wire cutters, a leash, and a bag of fried chicken. The dog was kept confined in a chicken coop and was only alive because I'd been making weekly nighttime visits with food and water for over a year. The owner was mentally incompetent, and our local law enforcement had refused to take action.

I took action when I discovered an underground railroad for “midnight rescues.” I liberated the dog and got him on the railroad to an out-of-state home.

I can tell you about this because enough years have passed for the statute of limitations to be up. How did this experience transform me into a writer? I wrote it up as a novella, published it, and won an award. That set me off on a course of writing which includes two more award-winning books. My complete list is here: Books by Laura Koerber (Author of I Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found) | Goodreads

My books tend to be character-driven and often develop a theme related to the love of nature or animals. Most of my novels are in the genre of magical realism and involve nature spirits and life after death; however, I also have one non-fiction book about an epic dog rescue that happened in Forks, WA. Yes, the Twilight town. I've also authored a cozy murder story and a collection of realistic short stories which includes the novella about stealing a dog.

I'm surprised to be a writer. I was precocious in art as a kid, but never saw myself as being able to write a book until I wrote one. I've always been a voracious reader of fantasy, science, history, and English murder mysteries. I think I learned to write by reading a lot.

Best wishes to all of you readers and writers out there and I hope you find a good book soon!

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