Seventeen-year-old Kevin Walsh, is an accomplished high school distance runner but he has never kissed a girl and rarely ever talked to one. Reluctantly he agrees to join his mother on a five-day 200-mile group bike tour from Lake Placid to Albany, New York, and for the first time in his life he falls madly in love with a fellow cyclist Taylor Lewis. This should be a very good thing, but as the days go by Kevin begins to suspect his mother may also be falling in love but with someone who is not his father.
ON YOUR LEFT is a coming-of-age story told from Kevin’s point-of-view as he learns some history along the way, what it’s like for an African-American teenage girl to navigate her way through modern America, and how wonderful and painful it is to fall in love.
Jack Rightmyer has published two books of nonfiction “A Funny Thing About Teaching” and “It’s Not About Winning.” He was a longtime high school track and cross country coach and is an avid cyclist who has biked across England and throughout most of the Northeast. He was an English teacher at the middle, high school and college level and today is a freelance arts writer at The Albany Times Union.
