Tucker McBride — Doris Gaines Rapp

Tucker McBride thinks his family is different from the other guys' relatives. He has no mother and an absent father. His brother teases him and one sister watches him like a stalker. Tucker buries his feelings of loss and disappointment under mountains of action and adventure. It was love from his dog, Joe that made up for the oddities of his strange, multigenerational family. It's the mid-1900s; Tucker and his siblings live with Uncle Jacob and their grandparents. Almost the Fourth of July, 1946, he's angry because his dog Joe, a War Dog, didn't come home at the end of World War II. To avoid bad or negative feelings, he jumps into things before he thinks. The rush of power he feels from his risky behaviors acts like a band aid for his emotions. Thinking ahead could bring up thoughts he wants to avoid. For a twelve-year-old with the entire neighborhood as his playground, escaping into his own fantasies becomes a fast ride into a world of fun and forgetting. (Ages: 10 through grandparents)