Mothership
This middle-grade novel, looking like 75-80K words, is Lostine’s temporal prequel.
Mothership is narrated by the same kid as in Lostine, but just about a year younger, trying to adapt to a different town, with mostly different reasons to feel isolated. He is getting spun all over the place by:
His realization that he is responsible for an old, one-eyed homeless man’s one-eyedness.
His unpredictable neighborhood friends Fizz and Late.
His mother getting involved with their landlord, while his dad is M.I.A. nearly a year.
The state of war he is waging with a neighborhood faction he calls “Them”.
His regular habit of throwing rocks at bums standing in the doorways of boxcars speeding by in mile-long, Seattle-bound freights.
Gold fever hot as that of the men he has to outwit for it.