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I’m writing from Oyster Island.
It’s not really an island, not even a peninsula. It’s just a strip of bank a couple hundred yards to the west of our house. There aren’t any oysters on Oyster Island, either.
There are mussels, though. Tons of them. So many, that when my daughter first saw all those pearly white shells glistening in the shallows, she yelled out, “Oyster Island!”
She was four.
She’s about to turn seven now and knows the difference between an oyster and a mussel. She says she wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up and live in Australia and write books about her adventures. “But not like your books, Dad. I want to write nonfiction.”
Used to, we’d get home from school, get in our little red canoe, and paddle down the bank to where the shallows shined like pearls.
We did all sorts of stuff with those mussel shells. We cleaned them out, dried them, and painted sunsets on the mantles. We made wreaths. We used them as currency, as ninja stars and dessert plates for our “Lakeside Café.”
Hippies hung out at Oyster Island too, or maybe it was just high school kids. I don’t know. We never saw them. We just saw what they left behind: beer cans, fire pits, busted hammocks and broken water guns. Treasures to a four, even a five-year-old.
I made up a story about lake elves and how they were the ones who left those treasures behind. My daughter ate it up.
There were trails back there, paths the hippies walked to get from the highway to the water, and railroad tracks too. When the train came by you could feel it from your toes to your teeth. We found a box turtle once and named him Dr. T. Glenn Pait.
We haven’t been back to Oyster Island in a while. Months. Maybe a year. Our afternoons are busier than they were back then. My daughter has piano lessons on Mondays, gymnastics on Tuesdays, swim on Wednesdays. On Thursdays, we visit my parents, and in a couple more weeks, it’ll be time for basketball.
My daughter’s never played basketball, but she’s looking forward to her first season, and here I am, thinking about seasons gone past.
There’s all sorts of stuff people never tell you about parenting. Nobody told me my kids would be sick for at least one week out of every month. Nobody explained how hungry and thirsty they’d get ten minutes before bedtime. Nobody ever warned me parenting is nothing but a series of lasts.
The last baby tooth. The last kiss in the drop-off line at school. The last time she played Barbies. The last trip to Oyster Island . . .
Did I miss it?
I hope not.
The lake elves might be gone, Dr. T. Glenn Pait the turtle has probably wandered off too, but there's still magic in those pearly shallows. New stories I could tell that might lure a seven-year-old back to Oyster Island. I’m thinking something like a dolphin rescue on the banks of Australia. Yeah, that might do the trick, for a little while longer.
| Books authored by Eli Cranor |
Broiler
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The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge rest in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH.
Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw away from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higher-ups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream. |
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
| Previous columns: |
• Writing from Jayne Lemons
• Writing from Bed
• Writing from Witherspoon Hall
• Writing From: Coco
• Writing from the Beach
• Writing From: Crooked Creek
• Writing from a Nursing Home
• Writing from a Firework Tent
• Writing from a Boat
• Writing from the Stars
• Writing from the Pool
• Writing from the Kitchen
• Writing from Summer
• Writing from Kindergarten
• Writing from Mom
• Writing from a Plane
• Writing from Home
• My second novel’s publication
• A New Marriage Milestone
• An Invitation to the Party
• Writing from a Thunderstorm
• Writing from a Soundbooth
• Writing from “Jazz Beach"
• Writing from the Sabbath
• Writing from somewhere between Little Rock and Russellville
• Writing from my back deck
• Writing from the morning of my thirty-fifth year
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• Writing on the day of the college football National Championship
• Writing from the space between breaths
• Writing from 2022
• Writing from the glow of a plastic Christmas tree
• Writing on a rollercoaster of triumph and disaster
• Writing from the drop-off line at my daughter’s elementary school
• Writing with Thanksgiving on my mind
• Writing from the crowd before the start of a Shovels & Rope show
• Writing from the depths of a post-book-festival hangover
• Writing from the Ron Robinson Theatre
• Writing to you on Halloween Eve
• Writing from my bed on a Saturday morning
• Writing from my office with two darts clenched in my left hand
• Writing from the shade of my favorite tree
• Writing from my desk on a Tuesday morning
• Writing from a pirate ship
• Writing from the airport
• Writing from the hospital
• I'm writing from the water
• Writing from my wife's Honda Pilot
• Writing from my office |
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