Otherwood

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by Pete Hautman


  Stuey took another bite. Even better.

  He had never tasted anything like it.

  I grew up on a dead-end street with a forest behind our house — a large wooded area that had once been a golf course. I remember my dad taking me for that first walk in the woods. I was five years old. He taught me the names of the trees and the animals. He taught me about poison ivy and wild berries. We discovered a patch of creeping bent, all that remained of the old golf course.

  Those woods became my playground, my refuge, my universe. I swung across a ravine on a grapevine swing, and spent many hours playing inside a deadfall fort. I sank to my knees in a peat bog, suffered countless mosquito bites and nettle stings, and built memories that will be with me to the end of my life. When I was ten years old, part of the woods was flooded by a nearby creek. It became a hundred-acre, deadhead-studded lake, perfect for rafting in the summer and ice-skating in the winter.

  Today, a third of the old woods has been leveled to make room for auto dealerships and office buildings. The rest has been preserved as a nature center. It’s no longer the wild place I remember — there are fences and wood-chip trails, interpretive signage and rules. I still go there a few times a year to search out the old paths and reawaken memories, but it is not the same. The magic is still there, but it has become civilized and lethargic. Otherwood is my eulogy to the woods that live now only in my memory.

  I did not write this book alone. Mary Logue read several versions, and always guided me back to the story when I became lost in the woods. Thank you, Mary. My childhood friend Leslie Harris, who grew up on the other side of the woods, helped me find the heart of the story — I don’t always know what my books are really about, you see. Thank you, Leslie. Thank you to my siblings, who helped prop up my memories. And finally, thanks to my editor, Katie Cunningham, and the entire team at Candlewick Press — you make our dreams reality.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Pete Hautman

  Cover illustration copyright © 2018 by Malte

  Mueller/Getty Images (trees)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2018

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending

  Candlewick Press

  99 Dover Street

  Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

  visit us at www.candlewick.com

 

 

 


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