EIGHTEEN is a novel in which the weight of family history collides with one boy’s emerging moral compass. On the day, in 1957, that he turns eighteen Milton Van Nuys is confronted with decisions most people spend their lifetimes avoiding. Memories, beginning with his father’s death ten years ago, frame instances of greed, racism and conflicting loyalties that pull him in different directions. He lives on a dairy farm with his mother and has a domineering uncle, both of whom figure in a family past simmering with secrets. Milton’s struggle is not only to identify the good, but also to act on that knowledge, as he is propelled to end his day in a way he never would have foreseen.
Rik Barberi’s stories have been published in The Country and Abroad, Hot Metal Press, The MacGuffin, The Berkshire Review, and Sixfold. His writing, including EIGHTEEN, is set in the fictional Taconic County in the HudsonValley.
