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The Longest Year, Just Before You Get Your Driver's License

Stan Crader
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Wheatmark

Stan Crader’s third book, The Longest Year, tells the story of a fifteen year old boy who watches his older friends get their driver’s licenses,  but he has to endure an excruciating year of waiting for his sixteenth birthday.

The book is the third in a series that follows a group of kids growing up in the small town of Colby, which is not unlike Crader’s hometown of Marble Hill, Missouri. The previous two books are The Bridge and The Paperboy.

Crader says obtaining a driver’s license is a milestone.

“Driving, and the freedom that you get when you finally get your driver’s license, even if you don’t have a car, just the fact that you know that you could go legally, is a huge point in a boy’s life,” Crader said.

The main character, Tommy Thompson, is loosely based on Crader’s experience as the youngest boy in a group of friends. During the summer before his junior year, when he was still fifteen, Crader remembers the excruciating feeling of mowing lawns and working at a grocery store while his older friends are driving cars.

“When you are fifteen, it’s no longer cool to ride a bicycle. You can when you are fourteen, but you can’t when you’re fifteen. And then when you get to be about eighteen, you can start riding a bicycle again because it’s kind of cute,” Crader said.

The other characters are loose composites of people he knew in Marble Hill, but characters are not based solely on one person.

“It is fairly autobiographical in a sense that people who grew up with me, or people who were around when I was growing up, will be able to identify some characteristics in certain people,” Crader said.

Crader says he witnessed some of the events in The Longest Year. In some cases, he might have overheard people talk about doing or planning certain things.

“It’s based on legend and is based on some actual events that occurred,” Crader said.

Crader will sign copies of his books at Barnes & Noble in Cape Girardeau on December 1, at Bilderbach Art Plaza in Cape Girardeau on December 8, and at The Mustard Seed in Marble Hill on December 15.

All proceeds from The Longest Year goes to Resurrecting Lives, a non-profit that supports traumatic brain injury research, treatment, advocacy and education for U.S. military personnel.

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