Elevation: 6,040

Ernest J. Finney

Texas Review Press, 2015 - Fiction - 119 pages

Winner, 2014 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize
California Book Awards silver medal for fiction, 2016

It's 1981, and thirteen-year-old Roscoe McAdams and his brother and sister have always lived with their parents, Sebastian and Moonstar, in an isolated cabin high on a ridge in California's northern Sierra, though often in spring when Moonstar can't stand the snow anymore she takes them for a stay down below. They've mostly been home-schooled.

Then, through a fluke that April, Moonstar becomes a substitute teacher in a small town and enrolls the kids in school there. Roscoe assumes that when summer comes, they'll go back to the ridge and Sebastian: that's how it's always been. But they don't, and then everything Roscoe thinks he knows for sure begins to fall apart.

About the author

ERNEST FINNEY, who lives in Sierra County, California, writes stories and novels, mostly set in the San Francisco Bay area or in the Central Valley or the Sierras. His books include Winterchill, Lady With the Alligator Purse, Words of My Roaring, California Time, Birds Landing, Flights in the Heavenlies, and Sequoia Gardens: California Stories.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Elevation: 6,040
• Author: Ernest J. Finney
• Publisher: Texas Review Press, 2015
• ISBN: 1680030493, 9781680030495
• Length: 119 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary