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Robert Newton Peck's first novel was the highly acclaimed A Day No Pigs Would Die. He has written more than sixty books, including the sequel, A Part of the Sky, and he is also the winner of the Mark Tvain Award for his Soup series of children's books. Many of his novels are deeply rooted in rural Vermont, where he grew up.

Rob plays jazz and ragtime piano, and tends eleven mustang horses and two cats. He and his wife, Sam, reside in Florida, the setting for Nine Man Tree.


From the Paperback edition.

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hor of the best-selling classic A Day No Pigs Would Die
In Depression-era Florida, twelve-year-old Yoolee's main concern in life is protecting his little sister, Havilah, and his long-suffering mother, Ruth Ann, from the violent rages of his alcoholic father. Then another horror enters their lives when the tiny swampland settlement is stalked by an enormous--and voracious--wild boar. When Yoolee's father disappears on a drunken binge, it's up to Yoolee to protect his family once again. In this spellbinding adventure and compelling coming-of-age novel, Robert Newton Peck continues his tradition of providing fine literature for young adult readers.  

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hor of the best-selling classic A Day No Pigs Would Die<br> In Depression-era Florida, twelve-year-old Yoolee's main concern in life is protecting his little sister, Havilah, and his long-suffering mother, Ruth Ann, from the violent rages of his alcoholic father. Then another horror enters their lives when the tiny swampland settlement is stalked by an enormous--and voracious--wild boar. When Yoolee's father disappears on a drunken binge, it's up to Yoolee to protect his family once again. In this spellbinding adventure and compelling coming-of-age novel, Robert Newton Peck continues his tradition of providing fine literature for young adult readers.

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Nine Man Tree

By Robert Newton Peck

Random House Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 1998 Robert Newton Peck
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780679892571
"Yoolee?"

As he heard his name being hollered, Yoolee Tharp lay on his belly in a patch of late-afternoon sunshine, watching a horse-head grasshopper gnaw the edge of a heart-shaped moonvine leaf. It made a faint munching noise and looked to measure nearly four inches. Closing his eyes, Yoolee imagined that he was tiny enough to ride that hopper as a pony.

"Yoolee! Where you at?" It was his daddy's snarl. "Answer up, boy, or I'll be coming with my deer-hide belt to locate you and whup ya proper."

"Ain't ya cut enough welts on that child?" Yoolee heard his mother say. Her voice was some softer. Yet there was also a hardness inside Ruth Ann's words, a sawtooth sound that had been notched into her by living under a roof with Velmer Tharp.

He was growling at her. "Shut yer mouth, woman. You want another cuff across yer face?"

"Soon," Yoolee whispered, stroking the grasshopper very lightly with a fingertip, "I'll be plenty growed to fetch Mama and Havilah away from this bad place." He didn't know exactly where they might go. It would be somewhere a spate off from Velmer's ornery temper. The three of them could make a happy home where flowers would grow beneath mockingbird music. And nobody'd be cussing or smelling of jug juice. Many times his back had smarted from the metal end of the belt. When old Velmer gripped it by the buckle, Yoolee could abide the lashing of leather. But the pain of getting buckled was tough to swallow. And it drew blood.

Although he was hungry, Yoolee refused to return to the shack, not caring if he missed out on supper. Havilah might sneak a few biscuits to him. His sister was only eight, three years younger, yet often treated him as though he were a doll instead of a big brother. Plenty of times she'd washed his bruises with salt water and then bandaged him with layers of lotus leaves to fend off any insects.

At night, if she reasoned he was still hurting, Havilah would sing him to sleep, making up words to her own little songs, tiny high-up notes that trilled like a lark.

Velmer never beat on Havilah.

With her he did a lot sorrier. Whenever she'd wander down to the crick, skin off her little sack dress, and wash herself, he'd hide among the low-growing palmetto to spy on his daughter. Yoolee had caught him doing it. That was the main reason the two of them hated each other so dreadful. After that, Velmer turned his belt around so the buckle would cut worse than sickness.

"I never told Mama," he said to the grasshopper. "Because it'd maybe put damage on her deeper than a belt could do."

Nor had he reported any of this to Havilah. Instead he'd merely advised his sister to do her private crick bathing at times when Velmer'd gone off with the scattergun to plume-hunt birds. She'd asked how come. So he told her a little white story that he'd made up about good manners and being polite enough to perform certain things alone. Like taking a leak. Or washing up.

"You mustn't trust everybody, Havilah," he had warned her.

For some reason that made her smile until all the freckles danced across her face. She said, "I trust you."

The sunset dimmed. Far to the southwest, beyond the Ten Thousand Islands and over the great gulf, dry drums of thunder rolled closer with every muffled boom, followed by a misty rain that drenched a day to a gray wet wool of night. Jagged rivers of white-hot lightning carved the purple sky into a massive block of marble large enough to be God's headstone. With each crash the vines on the gumbo-limbo tree trembled as though afraid. Back at the shack people again might be calling his name to come in from the storm. Yet a war of noise prevented his hearing their voices.

As the storm crawled away, inching eastward over the Everglades, the rain also retreated. All that remained were the countless taps of raindrops.

Nonetheless Yoolee waited.

It made little sense to return to Velmer's rasping rage. To eat supper, Yoolee would have to absorb the man's abuse, and a meal of grits and collards wasn't worth it. No hunger pang cut sharp enough to prod him homeward. Thus he stayed among the damp aromas of wild orange, muscadine, and lancewood until the night darkened and deepened, dried by delicate breezes.

Rain had driven much of the animal life to shelter, yet as the storm disappeared, all nocturnal forms appeared to hunt and be hunted. An owl hooted. In response, a three-quarter moon emerged, inviting Yoolee Tharp to stand in its light and brush the moisture and mud from his only garment, a bib overall once dark blue but now faded to softness in both color and texture.

"Yoolee," his sister had recently warned, "you best prosper your duds. Because when you outgrows 'em, they might be mine."

When his bare foot stepped to snap a fallen gumbo twig, the timid sound caused him to freeze. A chilly feeling, as though unknown eyes were searching him, whispered a caution to stay still. Yoolee inhaled the scents as though they were spices, most of them familiar--except one, a wisp that willed him to wonder: What? Or who? It wasn't anything green. Nothing rooted in the deep layers of peaty muck that oozed up between his toes.

His nostrils detected a smell that walked, breathed, and hunted.

While he peered through the pond apples hanging from spindle limbs that drooped with their weight, the foreign odor again flinched his nose. It seemed alarmingly alive, mean and menacing. Not human, because the stink was too strong.

"What are you?" he asked the darkness.

Sneaking a few steps nearer to the distant shack, Yoolee could hear his daddy's grating voice. A hard object was hurled at somebody, then all seemed to simmer and still. When old Velmer was shirttail drunk, his legs couldn't quit wobbling, and he'd sort of fall down wherever he stood. Once he passed out, there was no rousing him, not even if their shack was burning.

Yoolee waited in the night.

Both of his parents were asleep when he final crept indoors and up the short wall ladder to the cramped loft to join Havilah on the tattered tick they shared.

"Where you been?" Her eyes popped open.

His hand quickly covered her mouth. "Outside. Please don't wake up the folks, on account I'm too tuckered to scoot off again."

Havilah eased her brother's hand off her face.

"You hungry, Yool?" When he nodded, her fingers slid beneath the muslin pillow to pull out four biscuits, a sweet potato in its skin, plus an ear of roasted corn.

"Thanks, Hav."

With a biscuit in his mouth, Yoolee ripped the warm corn shucks off, one by one, being careful not to make any noise. As he chewed, Havilah stretched a hand up to the top rafter and produced a tin cup. "l also sneaked you some goat's milk. Because corn usual turns you thirsty."

"You're a star of a sister."

Knees clasped under her resting chin, Havilah watched him chomp the corn ear. "You know, Yoolee, you make more racket eating than most people do when they talk."

"That's because I'm so blessed empty. I could about eat a gator raw. My gut couldn't have lasted another breath without chow."

In the dark, Yoolee could feel his sister's wide eyes studying him. "Yool, what's it like to be eleven?"

"Bigger'n ten. And a whole doggone mile longer than eight. Soon I'll be coming up twelve. Then thirteen, and that's manhood, like Mama heard be ancient Hebrew."

She wiped corn off his chin. "You still are paltry little to stand up a man. Men shave. And they ramble off to work."

"Who told you?"

"Mama."

After swallowing the last biscuit without much bothering to chew, he whispered, "Hav, you're a good ol' sister, but you don't know beans about getting growed up, like me."

She poked him. "I know a thing you don't. Mama told me during her stand at the cookstove getting supper. It's sort of a secret. Soon we're to git some company."

He felt excited. "Who's coming?"

"It's somebody nice who ain't visited for a spell. When she told me, Mama almost smiled. Now I bet you be itching to know real bad."

Yoolee's head fell to the other pillow, formerly a flour sack. "Not me. I'm too tired to worry it, even if the person who's coming here is President Hoover. So you can keep your secret until sunup."

Closing his eyes and letting out a heavy sigh, he pretended to be falling asleep. He knew full well that Hav wouldn't be able to nestle the news to herself. In less than a count of three, she'd bust it out wide open. One...two...

"Promise if I tell you, you won't let on to Daddy. He ain't to know, Mama says, because Pa can't abide who's coming. Hates his guts." Havilah paused for a breather. "Give up7" "Okay, I give up, Hav. Who's coming?" "Uncle Bib."


From the Paperback edition.

Continues...

Excerpted from Nine Man Tree by Robert Newton Peck Copyright © 1998 by Robert Newton Peck. Excerpted by permission.
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