About The Book
12th ave south
In this vivid, heartfelt coming-of-age set in the early ’90s, Jack Powers leaves Iowa chasing air that feels freer. He wakes in a New Orleans haze, then keeps driving east until the Atlantic stops him. In Jacksonville Beach, he finds a job at RBB Imports, a sharp-tongued crew, and a neighbor, Miss Mable, who teaches him that belonging isn’t given, it’s built. One dinner, one laugh, one honest risk at a time. Join the journey of bad choices, small mercies, and the slow thaw of a guarded heart into chosen family.
12th Ave South
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You'll read the hangover morning in New Orleans that makes Jack choose motion over drift: a "single blade of sunlight," the click of a wobbly fan, the room's stale-beer fug. It's funny and bleak at once, and it sets the book's sensory truth from the first line. That urgency, get up, get out, pushes him east.
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Jack steps into RBB Imports, where the atrium and spiral staircase signal who has power before anyone speaks. At the front desk, Allissa’s sultry phone voice becomes a precise gatekeeper in heels. Upstairs and down, quick introductions and small favors double as tests. You’ll read the office’s unwritten code and how Jack starts reading it.
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You'll read the moment Miss Mable spots Jack and opens a door: dinner at her beach place on 12th Avenue South, "Ties are illegal at the beach… I'm always on beach time." Then the drive east turns into a slow reveal: pines to palms, the Intracoastal bridge, a flash of white egret, and the ocean ahead like an answer. It's the chapter where the book's compass flips from clock time to tide time.
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You'll read how that first beach night spills into predawn restlessness and a walk straight to the water. The scene slows: breath of the ocean, body unclenching, the kind of silence that feels like permission. It's the first time you feel "home" as a sensation, not a place.
