Attitude

Fresh, gritty and laced with dry humour, Attitude is a fast-moving story readers of all ages won't want to put down. Fourteen-year-old Lyle Prince is a cynical near-dropout with a severe case of attitude. His mother can't stand him, his father is in jail and he knows perfectly well that Laura, the girl of his dreams, will never give him a second look. Life in the struggling small town of Southmead, Huron county, is a burden relieved only by Lyle's wingman Garth, borderline autistic son of the town's funeral director. It's dead of winter and an outbreak of weird stuff—random acts of vandalism and livestock going missing—is unsettling the citizens of Southmead. Lyle becomes involved, unintentionally, by foiling a holdup at the local corner store which he was all set to shoplift himself. Passing the door, Laura spots the commotion and calls for help. An improbable attraction kindles but then everything changes. Laura disappears and Lyle's mom is implicated in the death of Hank Niles, the guy who's kicking her out of the store she rents from him on Main Street. With Dad behind bars and elder brother Kenny dead from meningitis five years since, Lyle realizes it's all down to him. Attitude and cynicism will have to take a back seat, and after false starts and misadventures, they do. As events unfold, Lyle, Garth, and Laura, abetted by local reporter Marigold Wallace, a feisty young woman of colour, face perils and challenges beyond anything they could have imagined in their crappy little town. A protest sit-in planned for a local food-processing plant turns out to be something far scarier and the teenagers find themselves ensnared.