Book talk - Cold Sassy Tree

Burns, O. A. (1984). Cold Sassy tree. New York, NY: Dell Publishing. 

Have you ever had one of those summers when the things that happened to you would be enough to fill your entire life, plus some? Sit back and let me tell you about a boy that had such a summer.

In this turn-of-the-century coming-of-age story, Will Tweedy has the summer of a lifetime. His life in the small Southern town of Cold Sassy was typical for the times. Life was slow-paced and everything moved leisurely. Nothing news-worthy ever happened. That is until his grandfather stopped by one morning and announced that he was getting married. This was big news because Will's grandmother had only been dead for three weeks and his new bride was younger than his youngest daughter. His daughters went crazy! Needless to say, this was to be the biggest scandal Cold Sassy had ever witnessed and Will Tweedy was put right in the middle. He could not avoid it and would not have tried if he could. He loved his grandpa and supported him fully. This was the first Will had seen him happy and full of life since Grandma died.

Unknown to Will, this was to be the start of a series of events that would change his life forever. Things began happening one right after the other. During the remainder of that summer Will fell for a girl from "the wrong side of the tracks", experience his first kiss, was ran over by a train, and was the first in his family to drive a car. This all happened while Will was still coming to terms with the concept of death and how it affected those left behind. Not only had his grandmother just died, but his best friend had an accident the past winter that resulted in his untimely death, and a family member would commit suicide before summer's end. And then there was Grandpa. Will was leaning about the meaning and value of life from the things he was doing. Sound interesting? Then you need to read Cold Sassy Tree, a realistic fiction novel by Olive Ann Burns to see how Will handled these situations and grew-up that fateful summer.