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East Van Saturday Night – Short Stories and a Novella

"...adventures were undertaken, friendships were forged, and character was created."

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https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU

East Vancouver in the '50s and '60s was a low income, blue-collar neighbourhood. Kids grew up with minimum supervision. They left home in the morning, showed up for dinner, and were gone again until "the gun" sounded at 9 p.m. During the time away adventures were undertaken, friendships were forged, and character was created. East Van Rules was not only meant as a challenge, but also a code to live by.

These four short stories and novella highlight coming of age events; a ten-year-old playing for the elementary school softball championship, a teenage tough strutting his stuff at the local dance, a hippie youth hitchhiking across Canada during the Summer of Love.

Watershed moments told from a perspective that explains why you can take the boy out of East Van, but you'll never take East Van out of the boy.

WATCH THE PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

https://animoto.com/play/zkccQowD4WH9gdesTlXCDg

3.5 stars

Pate is a dancer who suffered from serious knee injury. Now he's back to his hometown in Atlanta to follow his Plan B: opening a dance studio. Ace Samson is a gorgeous contractor who follows up Pate's request for renovation project...

One thing I LOVED from Pate was how grounded to reality he was. Knowing that his injury was serious this time, in which he had to follow regiment of physio and couldn't exactly do a lot of strenuous dance again, he thought of Plan B, which allowed him to still dance but lessening the extent of his injury. I thought that was realistic and I applauded him for it. Often, in stories like these, the characters would be wallowing in misery until they were reminded by their loved ones. Not Pate though.

The relationship with Ace was a bit fast but at the same time it didn't feel instantaneous. They did take time to build the friendship while Ace was working the renovation and Pate dealing with the administrative side of opening a dance studio.

The misunderstanding part didn't feel necessary though. And I was rather annoyed with the friend slash manager, Nina, no matter her reasons. Sure, maybe Pate would need a lot of recommendations so he has to stay in everyone's radar, but darn, I felt like she wasn't listening to Pate's wish or supported his back-up plan.

All in all, I thought this was sweet.