Alan Johnson

When Forever's Over Alan Johnson

It's 1966, and 'the times, they are a-changin'. For Cubby James, his best friend Danny MacMahan and the kids living in the East Tennessee mountain town of Lincoln, everything is all mixed up. As they begin high school, the reality of events makes them question all they learned as children. Leaders once respected, fail to measure up. Beliefs held as truth, begin to crack. The good die young. It looks to them as if the world is turning up-side down. Closer to home, when the County Sheriff, with a woman not his wife, crashes his new vehicle with a trunk full of moonshine, Cubby and Danny get their first taste of local politics as they work to elect Danny's older brother, a recently returned Viet Nam veteran. Nationally, the daily news is a drum beat of body counts and battles fought in a war half-way around the world, that increasingly makes no sense, while protests mount at home. Against this backdrop, the teens must work through the changes occurring in their lives as they start to become adults, enter high school and get caught up in sports. Along the way, the guys come to the realization that girls really are different-and not half as bad as they once thought. As 1968 begins, war worries increase, politicians lie and leaders are assassinated. The people look to religion to anchor their lives in the chaos, and the teens begin to deal with emotions and situations that are constantly changing around them. But even religion can be twisted, and they learn that words, when taken to extreme, have consequences. WHEN FOREVER'S OVER transports the reader to a time when things were supposed to be simple, but instead were a maze of conflicting values and passions. In the end, friendship is the only thing that lasts forever. Told from the young teen's viewpoint, and in the tradition of mountain storytelling, this "coming of age" tale is a trip back in time.