The Last Summer (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646544462)

The Last Summer is a story of friendships that were born on a baseball field in a small but growing North Carolina town. Swansville once had baseball fever, and over a decade later, a group of twelve-year-old boys reignite the love of baseball for everyone in town. Narrator Carson Smith is nearly thirty-eight years old as he looks back on the magical summer when he was only twelve years old. Carson, or sometimes called Worm, as in bookworm, chronicles his and his teammates' summer playing Little League Baseball before a new middle school is built on the other side of town. The new middle school will split up the boys, and the town will eventually need to choose sides, but for one last summer, everyone in Swansville cheers for the boys from the brown water of Pisgah Lake.

Carson has always lived in the shadow of his twin sister, Whitley, until the summer of 1994, when his all-star baseball team begins to have success. She reluctantly follows the team on their quest to Williamsport, Pennsylvania. New student Wyatt Hartley becomes the missing piece of a talented but flawed Little League all-star team. Drake Duckworth and Darren "Ogre" Winslow happily concede to the new boy in town as he takes the reins of leadership, but Travis Harrison and his dad, Coach Alex, will not let the newcomer take over without a challenge. Wyatt and Carson's unlikely friendship strengthens each other's weaknesses as the two boys navigate the final months of the sixth grade and the last summer before becoming teenagers. Their bond stays strong despite the challenges of growing up.