Thank you very much, Sara.
Thanks to the rest of you for being here.
I was thinking on my way down here
that I haven't been on campus in like two months,
and I'm so impressed that this many people could find it
in the summer.
So thank you for being here.
As Sara mentioned, I have a new novel, Scrapper coming out
in September.
I'm going to read from that tonight.
I think this is my last reading before the book comes out.
It's my last chance for a trial run before it's live.
The book is set in Detroit.
I grew up in Michigan.
I lived in Michigan my whole life
until last year when I moved to Arizona.
It starts off in the illegal metal scrapping
that's happening sort of in the 100,000 abandoned buildings
in the center of Detroit.
And it's-- the protagonist is a man named Kelly who grew up
in Michigan, has returned to the state after 10 years of living
in the south, and was unable to find work and ends up
in the city, scrapping metal.
The sort of instigating incident to the book
is that in one of the abandoned houses
that he's taking metal out of he finds a young boy who's
been kidnapped and is held in the basement of this house.
I'm going to read a little bit from earlier in the book,
and then I'm going to read the scene in which he
finds the boy.