“In the summer of 1963, when I was thirteen, I stabbed my father in the chest with a Davy Crockett Explorers pocketknife.” How’s that for a killer first sentence?
Chapter 3 opens with another lyric line (this one faintly recalling Saul Bellow’s famous Augie March opener): “I grew up in Irish Chicago: Bridgeport, specifically.” The “I” of David E. Hilton‘s first novel Kings of Colorado (Simon & Schuster) is Will Sheppard, a battered 13 year old who’s forced to leave Chicago for a brutal Colorado reformatory school after the aforementioned stabbing incident.
Publishers Weekly calls it “a stark novel of violence and fierce friendship” and Kirkus chimes in with “a heartfelt portrait of young men in a bygone age.” But don’t take their word for it – you can hear Hilton, a Round Rock resident, read from the novel at his launch party tomorrow (Jan. 13), 7pm at BookPeople.
This article appears in 2010.
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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...
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