TULSA, Okla., Nov. 21, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Sometimes people are reluctant to abandon prejudicial notions colored by nostalgia, but events beyond their control can change them. In Danny Boyd's new novel, The Old Place (now available through 1stBooks), an elderly former rancher is pried from the past in a journey that forever changes his life and his community.
Set in the present day in the small Texas town of Leeray, the book follows Cal Stewart, an elderly former rancher. Grieving for his dead wife and bereft of a ranch he was forced to leave, Cal faces a lonely future, merely waiting to die. Then, a nosy little boy named Scooter draws him into the lives of his misfit neighbors. Cal's reputation is tainted by talk of him socializing with thugs and being romantically involved with an African-American waitress after he helps her and her family.
Meanwhile, the estranged son of his former ranch partner returns to town amid gossip of drugs and gangs. Cal resents his old partner and longs for his beloved Old Place ranch, but faces the townspeople after an unimaginable tragedy costs him much more than his good name.
Boyd says his novel "explores the universal dilemma of how we long to free ourselves from our past and its prejudices while they cling to us and we cling to them." The book also looks at how this affects the growing drug problem in small towns. The result is a haunting story of personal triumph.
For 16 years, Boyd has worked in corporate public relations and as a newspaper and wire service journalist in western Texas and Oklahoma. The Old Place is his first novel, which he says is influenced by his "faith, an appreciation of rural sentiments, the history of the Oil Belt west of Fort Worth and respect for the liberty of individuals." His family was involved in ranching, and Boyd worked in construction and the oil fields before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin. Boyd now lives in Tulsa, Okla.
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