Title: Street of Storytellers
Genre: YA Multicultural Thriller
Release Date: September 2019
Publisher: Rootstock Publishing
Summary
Luke is 15, and he’s mad at his dad. He blames his parents’ recent divorce on his father’s obsession with finishing a book about a lost ancient civilization in a dangerous part of Asia.
But his father badly wants his son to understand -- so he brings Luke to Peshawar, an age-old crossroads city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier. To punish his dad, Luke refuses to learn anything about the project; instead he’s drawn into the strange, intriguing Old City, where a frightening new extremism is on the rise.
Luke is dazzled by Danisha, but in the city’s strict Pashtun culture they can’t ever be seen together. He’s recruited by her brother to assist the jihadis -- but he also bonds with Yusuf, an Afghan refugee who knows what could happen. Then there are the musicians Luke befriends, and a mysterious Sufi teacher who opens his eyes.
As a young journalist in the early 1980s, Doug left his newspaper job to spend two years in Pakistan, India and Nepal. He traveled, wrote, taught English and worked on what he originally planned as a nonfiction book about his experiences, which years later grew into Street of Storytellers.
Doug’s other books include three more young-adult novels, a biography of Alexander the Great for young readers, and 10 books for the Choose your Own Adventure series.
But his father badly wants his son to understand -- so he brings Luke to Peshawar, an age-old crossroads city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier. To punish his dad, Luke refuses to learn anything about the project; instead he’s drawn into the strange, intriguing Old City, where a frightening new extremism is on the rise.
Luke is dazzled by Danisha, but in the city’s strict Pashtun culture they can’t ever be seen together. He’s recruited by her brother to assist the jihadis -- but he also bonds with Yusuf, an Afghan refugee who knows what could happen. Then there are the musicians Luke befriends, and a mysterious Sufi teacher who opens his eyes.
Street of Storytellers is intensely suspenseful. It’s about three families across two cultures ... about two world religions, Islam and Buddhism ... about music, Western and Eastern ... and about how modern extremism affects ordinary families. It’s about an ancient true story the world has almost forgotten. And it’s about learning to think for yourself, even if that puts your life at risk.
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Excerpt
1.
Glory
Early
evening of Monday, December 17, 1984
Peshawar,
capital of the North-West Frontier Province
Pakistan
MY
DAD GOT US SEPARATE ROOMS. (I’d have thrown a fit if he hadn’t.) We were on the
second floor of the hotel. My room was simple and narrow, with light blue walls
and a window at the end that had wooden shutters, closed.
There was a bed, a dresser, a wooden desk and a
chair. Out of my backpack I took my new, black-and-red Walkman cassette player
and silver Toshiba headphones, early Christmas presents from my mom. I set them
on the desk beside the red cassette case, size of a kid’s lunchbox, with my
twelve best tapes inside. I looked around the room—it seemed clean, which was a
relief—and thought, Okay. I can stay in here the whole vacation if I have to.
Okay.
Because I had decided something. My dad had me
over Christmas vacation, it said so in the divorce, so he could force me to fly
with him halfway around the world to this weird place—but he couldn’t make me do anything
here if I didn’t want to. What could he do, send me home? He had zero leverage
at this point. So I had decided: I would not go anywhere, or do or see or learn
anything, that had anything to do with the Great Goddamn Project.
He wanted me to understand, but I already understood.
My dad’s obsession with his project had wrecked my family. I would have nothing
to do with it.
He didn’t know this yet. But he would find out.
The
Great Goddamn Project, or G.G. Project for short, was what my mom started
calling it after my dad had been so obsessed for so long with working on his
book about some lost civilization over here that my mom finally gave up on the
marriage and moved out. Now we lived in a little apartment, her and me, except
for every other weekend, when I had to hang around our old house where my dad
kept on typing and typing behind the locked door of his home office, barely
even aware I was there.
And now?
Now this.
There was a door between my room and his. Stuck in it was a big
Now this.
There was a door between my room and his. Stuck in it was a big
old-fashioned
key. I went over and turned the key; the door locked with a thunk. I
pulled hard but it held solid. I stood there and smiled.
Guess what,
Dad?
The lock’s on my side now.
The lock’s on my side now.
About the Author
Doug Wilhelm is a fulltime writer and editor in Weybridge, Vermont. His 16 previous books include The Revealers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), a novel about bullying that has been the focus of reading and discussion projects in well over 1,000 schools, and continues to be part of the curriculum in middle schools across the country.As a young journalist in the early 1980s, Doug left his newspaper job to spend two years in Pakistan, India and Nepal. He traveled, wrote, taught English and worked on what he originally planned as a nonfiction book about his experiences, which years later grew into Street of Storytellers.
Doug’s other books include three more young-adult novels, a biography of Alexander the Great for young readers, and 10 books for the Choose your Own Adventure series.
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