Threading the Needle (Sandhill Chronicle) - Tapa dura

In a chilling mixture of the nostalgic and the supernatural, Clay Reynolds adds to his ""Sandhill Chronicles"" this story of Faustian bargains, drag racing, old-time rock and roll, and a sister's love for a brother who dies tragically young. Sherry Littlefield, heroine of this tale of high speed and certain death, finds out a horrible truth about the senseless accident that took the life of her older brother, Keith. By piecing together clues, she learns that her brother discovered a ghostly drag race that takes place every spring on the Old Loop, an antique stretch of highway that leads to an impassable tunnel called the Needle. Long before Sherry and Keith were born, a local tough and street hood, Bobby Dean, made himself legendary for his prowess behind the wheel of Black Sabbath, his powerful and souped-up '57 Chevy. Taking on and defeating all comers, he evolved a deadly race that terminated at the Needle, a contest wherein only the winner was left alive. Eventually, Bobby Dean's evil caught up with him. His and Black Sabbath's fatal crash ended an era. Or so everyone thought. Now returned as a spirit, Bobby Dean emerges on warm spring nights to take on new challengers. On the line are the souls of the living and the dead - the stakes of beating a demon at his own game. Keith's soul has joined the defeated, but Sherry, finding and rebuilding her brother's demolished '66 Mustang, determines to finish what he started. Hell-bent to meet the demonic Bobby Dean in one last challenge, Sherry vows to thread the Needle and free Keith's soul. A steadily building suspense follows Sherry's systematic search for weakness in her ghostly adversary and her obsessive honing of her skills under the hood and behind the wheel. Despite her obsession, when the showdown is imminent, only a wellspring of faith can enable Sherry to pit herself against the dark legacy that haunts her small town.

Clay Reynolds is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies for the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas.