A lushly told reflection on a young man's passage into manhood
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From irascible patriarch Alonzo "Grandpa Tuke" Tooker on down, the Hopkins family--altruistic Dottie, dissatisfied Chester, and their sons Langston and Trajan--are no typical residents of the Thames River Valley town of Preston, Connecticut. This is perhaps most true of Langston, a boy whose peers declare him to be the "King of Preston Plains Middle School": a vibrant young man dedicated to his dream of competing in Olympic-level Tae Kwon Do, as well as to his growing passion for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu.

Yet when a terrible accident brings Langston's Olympic dreams to an abrupt close, Trajan Hopkins, the family's youngest son, must learn to cope alone with the coming trials of adult life: his slowly changing relationship with self-destructing childhood friends, his initiation into the world of women at the hands of a former teacher, and his growing awareness of the risky world outside his family's circle within the shadow of a Haitian drug lord's operation and the often-threatening local police who watch over it.

Jedah Mayberry's The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle marks the debut of a striking new voice in American fiction: intelligent, richly cadenced, slyly funny, and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.