Pivotal Times: The Freshman Class Launched May 7

     Pivotal Times: The Freshman Class by Kenneth Fenter was launched May 7th 2012. The novel is now available in print edition as well as Kindle on Amazon.com A preview may be seen on Amazon by clicking on the cover and looking inside the cover through the second chapter.

     This is the third installment in the series of novels beginning with The Ruin issued in 2010. In The Ruin Clifton Kelly spends a year recovering his self worth after years of bullying compounded by severe parenting. He lives in ancient Anasazi cliff dwelling for the year living off the sparse resources of the high desert wilderness. In the Bee Tree Clifton emerges to face his parents and neighbors and reaches out to develop friendships and test his new courage. In the new third novel Pivotal Times, Clifton joins his former class mates, and friend Angelina Martinez as a freshman at Montezuma County High School. Angelina is a sophomore as he should have been. She is a transfer from the smaller school of Mancos.
     The main characters, Cliff, Angelina Martinez, Hector and Emilio Rodriguez, and Ana Hernandez, are all from Summit Ridge a plateau overlooking Cortez and have attended small country one room schools. They waste no time letting their presence be known in the large county high school.
     Cliff is challenged the first week, when Freshman hazing begins. After enduring eight years of bullying in grade school, he goes on a crusade to stop bullying in high school. His classmates recognize his leadership abilities and elect him to represent the Freshman Class to the Student Council for his stand against freshman initiation.
    
     Emilio Rodriguez, former bully to Clifton, now a friend, becomes a target of freshman hazing leading to a deadly encounter with racial overtones. The school rallies around him and the incident threatens explode into a racial riot between Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American populations.
     The highschool social scene presents challenges and opportunities for Cliff and Angelina and their growing relationship as upperclassmen begin to see Angelina as a desirable prospect for dating. Cliff feels threatened and jealous.
     The middle 50s were times of change, rock & roll, a court mandated end to segregation, a growing interest for equality in girls sports and important medical and technological breakthroughs. In 1955, even small town America was getting television and the dial telephone. Kids were watching movies such as Black Board Jungle, and Rebel Without a Cause. Salk Polio Vaccine and the coming Eisenhower interstate highway system was improving life.They were indeed, "Pivotal Times."

Kenneth Fenter