Sketcher - ROLAND WATSON-GRANT

Nine-year-old 'Skid' Beaumont's family is stuck in the mud. Following his father's decision to relocate and build a new home, based on a drunken vision that New Orleans would rapidly expand eastwards into the wetlands as a result of the 1970s oil boom, Skid and his brothers grow up in a swampy area of Louisiana. But the constructions stop short, the dream fizzles out, and the Beaumonts find themselves sinking in a soggy corner of 1980s America. As things on the home front get more complicated, Skid learns of his mother's alleged magic powers and vaguely remembers some eerie stories surrounding his older brother Frico... Atmospheric, uplifting and deeply moving, SKETCHER is a novel about the beauty of life no matter how broken it is.