Hope Points North

 

    

          A compass is a very helpful tool—as long as its wielder knows the direction he wants to go. This wasn’t often the case in the sixties in America, when many felt directionless, with an unpopular war that had the country’s moral compass spinning. Hope Points North is a coming-of-age experience that takes place on Long Island during this turbulent period.

 

Chris McKellar is broke, a causality of  the great recession, and contemplates selling his valuable compass. However, the tailsman leads him thirty years into his past, to the end of the sixties, and the end of his childhood.

 

Chris tells his coming of age story in a pragmatic voice that portrays his loss of innocence, when he and his two companions left on a journey to Grumman Aerospace to see the lunar module. However, a despicable preacher's secret motives cause an altercation that ends with the boys involved in the reverend's demise.

 

Of the three boys, Chris is the conventional one of the group—the glue that binds the troubled Teddy and smart, introverted Charlie together. The story is Chris’s adult recollection of the time when he, Teddy, and Charlie decide to travel on their own to Grumman Aerospace Company, the builders of the Lunar Excursion Model—the craft that will eventually deliver man to the moon.

        

With a detective in pursuit, the boys follow their compass, sailing Long Island Sound on a Lifeboat fueled by their hope to see the moon-bound module, and the desire to make sense of  the world around them.