Old Music for New People, Paperback

It's the summer of 2013 and 15-year-old Ivy Scattergood has traveled with her family to their vacation home in Maine. The Scattergoods are a blended, mixed-race family with old Philadelphia area Quaker roots. Ivy loves the Red Sox, one single music group at a time (this year it's Johnnyswim), helping make dinner every night, and this guy in Maine named Bailey Cooper. Ivy also has no interest in makeup, heels, dresses, and most of the basic assumptions people make about what it means to be a teenage girl -- but don't call her a Tomboy, at least to her face. Then her cousin Robert from San Diego (also 15) comes to visit -- as a beautiful, glamorous young woman who has re-named herself Rita Gomez.Thus begins a summer where Ivy's worldview will expand, where she will discover new layers to herself and those around her, and where stepping forward into the unknown will emerge as a bold adventure. Lyrically written and brimming with spirit, OLD MUSIC FOR NEW PEOPLE is a luminous work of fiction.

About author(s):David Biddle has been a freelance writer for more than 35 years. He has published fiction, essays, and journalism with numerous publications ranging from The Harvard Business Review and BioCycle to Jerry Jazz Musician and Bull magazine. He was a contributing editor to InBusiness magazine for ten years, and is currently a contributing writer with TalkingWriting.com. Besides freelancing, he also worked as an environmental planner and energy consultant to governments, non-profits, and corporations all over North America from 1983 to 2012, authoring numerous manuals and handbooks, leading professional education programs, and publishing reports on extended field research projects. Over the last few years, Mr. Biddle's efforts have focused on several short story collections and a number of longer works. OLD MUSIC FOR NEW PEOPLE is his first novel.