The Carousel Horse Apprentice

About this book:

Fifteen-year-old Jesse King knows the smell of decay better than he knows music: rotting pilings, rancid fry oil, and wet pine on a boardwalk town the locals call the Ditch. Sweeping crumbs for cash under the table, he expects another dead-end summer—until he wanders into the Roundhouse after hours and meets Old Man Birch, a master carver with hands like cured ham and an offer written in sawdust.

Inside, forty-eight hand-carved basswood horses stand frozen mid-leap, a 1914 Illingworth slowly being eaten by salt fog and neglect. Under Birch’s eye, Jesse trades his linoleum knife for a drawknife, learning to read wood grain like a language, carve joints that won’t split, and uncover the hollows and secrets sealed inside each horse’s torso. But the pier’s days are numbered. With receipts drying up and a developer circling the property, every chisel stroke is a race against time—and every painted mane hides a story that refuses to stay buried.

The Carousel Horse Apprentice is a gritty, atmospheric coming-of-age story where salt air and sawdust collide, and a boy discovers that restoring a dying carousel might be the only way to save himself. Step inside the Roundhouse. The first turn of the organ is about to begin.