BOOK REVIEW: Pure Trash

If you remember Orange Crush in bottles, bike rides away from home, slingshots as fine entertainment and Good 'N Plenty's as a way of filling your stomach on a hot summer day, you might be able to relate to Pure Trash by Bette A. Stevens.

Pure Trash can be found at Amazon

 

If you've ever been offended, judged, spoken to in a way that gave you serious room for doubt about the world and the people in it, then you will definitely relate to Pure Trash.
 

Shawn is a poor boy, with a mother who makes her clothing out of old potato sacks and a father who spends most of their hard earned money on beer. But Shawn doesn't know that he is poor. He doesn't know his father is a drunkard. This is his life.

What Shawn knows is that he has a best friend and brother named Willie and that gathering pop bottles and turning them in for cash is the next best thing to being rich.

Shawn creates adventure at every turn and enjoys the simple pleasures of life:

"Flying down the other side (of the hill on a bike) gave me the best feeling in the whole world. I guess that's how that old chicken hawk feels when he soars above the pines at the edge of the field out back of the house."

The short story is filled with images and flavor only better provided by an ice cream cone.

"Dad always said that you 'had to hold your mouth just right,' or the fish wouldn't bite."

"Willie's brown eyes looked as big as Mum's pan friend donuts..."

The interesting thing about being poor as a child is that you rarely know you are poor, unless a Christian or two points out some 'obvious' lack. But even then, life goes on, and you make the best of what you've got.

Because it's all you can do.

I recommend Pure Trash to the adult reader and YA reader alike.