We’re always pleased to see a new book from Alan M Clark, not only a talented author but also, as it happens, an award-winning artist. The Will’ven’t Bin, just out from IFD Publishing (15^th October), joins his other intriguing historically-set works, this time with a Young Adult focus and science fiction elements. It’s a good read, and as usual, Clark brings his impeccable feel for period and detail with him, as well as a deeply sensitive ear for the real hopes and fears of young people. To such an extent, in fact, that our first thought was, although the speculative elements are intriguing, this book could also be enjoyed simply as a period adventure story.

So here’s the outline of the book, and below that, an excerpt provided by Clark himself:

“During the Great Depression, Martin, a 12-year-old only child of Nashville, Tennessee, has lost his father to polio and his mother has become overbearing. She hires a World War One veteran, Seth, to work at their home. Unbeknownst to her, Seth suffers mental illness. When he drives Martin’s beloved dog Fritz away, the boy has had enough loss. Martin goes against his mother’s and sets out to find Fritz, an odyssey that takes him into dangerous, unknown territory. He finds power-hungry men seeking a mysterious cache of futuristic weapons—the Will’ven’t Bin—and are willing to kill anyone who stands in their way.”

EXCERPT FROM THE WILL’VEN’T BIN

Seth took something out of his pocket. Watching him rub the thing with his thumb, I recognized the green piece of flint.

“Hey,” I said. “That’s mine.”

He looked at me curiously, but otherwise ignored my words.

“May I see that rock?”

He held the stone up in the dim light. The piece of flint having the same fish shape as the one I’d discovered at the spring house, I knew he’d stolen it. “Where did you get it?”

“I picked it up off the ground in France during the war. It’s my lucky charm. It hasn’t felt good in my hands lately, so I hid it. It seems to quiver a bit when I touch it. I can’t say it ever did that before. I’m trying to get used to it.” He eyed me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “Did you find it in the floor of the spring house? Are you the one who drew on it?”

“Maybe,” I said stupidly. His cloudy gaze had rattled me.

Seth held the stone out for me to see it in the light. He pointed at the near-perfect rectangle. “I scratched that into the stone with a knife during an artillery barrage that went on for so long, some of the men went mad. Not wanting that to happen to me, I concentrated on making the best rectangle I could. I imagined the lines were walls to keep the war and what it might do to me away from the other parts of my life.”

“Must have dulled the blade. That’s hard stone.”

“Dulled it so badly, I couldn’t sharpen it well enough later and had to get a new knife.”

He jabbed at that rectangle again. “I trapped 1918 in there. You put another rectangle over mine. Yours holds 1933. That star is me. I truly do not know what will come of it.”

He sounded upset.

“How is that star you?” I asked pointing. “I put the dot there.”

“I made it a star.”

“And how is that you?”

I don’t know how I know. I just do. Even if you scratched it there, that glowing dot feels like me, trapped between the years 1918 and 1933.”

“That’s an odd thing to say, odder still that you had the thought.”

“Not everything makes sense,” he said with a huff, his words full of disgust. “Some things you know in your gut. Took me a while to understand that. You’ll see for yourself one day.”

That sounded like nonsense. I considered the possibility that the sickness he’d spoken of had made him think like that.

Yet hadn’t I believed I’d communicated with dead Indians? I kept that to myself.

Seth looked like he was trying to move one of the rectangles cut into the hard stone. Why he thought he could do that, I don’t know, but he seemed to succeed in making the rectangles match up, one exactly over the other.

Deep booming off to the east caught our ears. The sound wasn’t much like those that came from the train yard. Then I heard a flat popping that sounded like distant gunfire.

Seth, in a panic, rubbed at the stone until the rectangles separated.

The booming and gunfire ceased suddenly as if a door had been closed. “Sorry,” Seth said, looking like a little boy who had done something wrong. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Did you move one of those rectangles?” I asked…

You can find more about Clark (his books and his fantastic art) at his own website here:

https://ifdpublishing.com/