Belshangles [Excerpt only]

by Susan Altstatt

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) Entry - this eBook is a sample of the first 3,000-5,000 words; it is not the full book.

The year is 1983, moments before the rise of rap, hip-hop and the digital CD, a world minus social media, where phones are still attached to cords. There are no sanitized teen heartthrobs fabricated by the Disney Channel. The rock stars kids idolize are grown men, beautiful in action, many of them brilliant. They are the Lord Byrons of their day, — mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Their deadly lifestyles only intensify the charm. The day after his tour closes in San Francisco, Tommi Rhymer, front man of the English band Belshangles, wakes up in a wilderness cabin. Tommi’s no stranger to casual sex with young fans and wealthy admirers. He’s beautiful, and he’s always used it to advantage. At twenty-nine, he’s at the top of his game. But drugs are beginning to undo him. He has no clue where he is now, who the teenager with him is, or how they got there. What he does know: he’s headed into withdrawal. Sex is the last thing on his mind; he has to get away. Fifteen-year-old Stanford faculty daughter Miranda “Andy” Falconer has been a Belshangles' fanatic since age eleven. The walls of her room are papered with Tommi’s likeness. She comes to Tommi’s 1983 Bill-Graham-Presents Oakland Day-on-the-Green concert in the battered microbus of a girl just old enough to drive. Unexpectedly, fate gifts the girls with passes to the after-party in Belshangles’ hotel suite. Their stay ends abruptly when Tommi rushes them down the hotel service stairs ahead of a police raid. When he passes out in the alley beside their car, Andy, unhesitating, heaves him into it. She has no plan, she just wants to be alone with Tommi Rhymer. As the saying goes: Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.

20 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 14, 2014

Reviews

[Carolyn (Carter) Schuk]

Belshangles captures the experience of being young rather than "looking at" youth. Youth is crazy, and while there are things that stretch belief some -- parents really wouldn't call the police if a kid goes missing for a couple of weeks? -- it rings true. It's a story of what love - agape - actually means in action and a young girl whose heart is open to that agape.

[Patricia Baker · Rating 1 out of 5]

New title....weirdness

this intro is borderline schizophrenic...hard to figure out what is going on and to whom....sounds like last year's Goon Party book...never did get completely fine.ish that book..