It’s the summer of 1969. The country is on edge with civil rights, desegregation, Vietnam, and the Cold War. Four teenage boys set out for adventure on Cape Lookout – a remote island along North Carolina’s Southern Outer Banks. Diving headlong into their new freedom, they quickly discover the edges of fun and foolhardiness, life and death, and love and loss. Risky surfing, water skiing, and driving are their outlets for anger, shame, isolation, and guilt. Cuts and bruises become their badges of growing trust in each other, as they struggle together through adversity toward manhood.
In Boys on the Edge, author Sam Bass invites readers to vividly experience the summer of ’69 as he did, listening to the music of a loud, hopeful generation, on a beautiful and dangerous island called Cape Lookout.