It's 1934, and Jim Glass is turning ten in Aliceville, North Carolina. This is a deceptively gentle, nostalgic look at childhood during an era when life was by turns harsh and hopeful. Earley offers an understated, poetic tribute to those families whose pride in and love for one another helped them face hard times.

This collection of stories, set in various locales of North Carolina create entire worlds and indelible moments as only the best short fiction does.

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two.
Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the Navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie's heart in his absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven, and gives a young man's...