Description

From the Award-winning author of INTO THE RIVER comes a riveting and action-packed novel that asks one question: Which street racer really controls the strip? 'Thunder Road' - You find it in any city after the cops are in bed. It's where street racers go to test their machines - and their nerve. For Devon Santos and Trace it's the steep rising pitch of the turbo, the screaming tires and curtain of white smoke hanging behind them: everything that spells street racing. Trace has grown out of small-town ways. He's hungry for more. In Auckland he hooks up with Devon, a guy with the Midas touch, who introduces Trace to burn-offs, big city style. Soon everything is smoking. There is a code with drivers: you don't criticize and you don't show fear. When Trace falls for a girl even Devon says is out of his league, loyalties are stretched. Then Devon hits on a scheme for hauling in cash. Soon enough he and Trace find out who really controls the strip. As the underworld closes in, it looks like their friendship and their lives could be heading for burnout.

Reviews

Outstanding praise for INTO THE RIVER by Ted Dawe "Both daring and compulsively readable, in Into the River Ted Dawe combines mythology, history and gritty realism into a powerful novel. An outstanding piece of world literature."--John Boyne, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas "I was entirely gripped by INTO THE RIVER, and struck by how relevant its content is to a contemporary teenage audience. This is an important, skillfully-told novel, and it deserves to be talked about. In short, I love this book. I'm not sure I can praise it enough."--Lucy Christopher, author of Stolen, a Printz Award honor book, and Flyaway, shortlisted for the Costa Award "Te Arepa/Devon is a deeply compelling character...Readers will either see themselves in Devon and his story or will reconsider their own roles in their schools' social structures...an object lesson in how systems of power perpetuate themselves."--Kirkus Reviews "Determined and curious teens will find this work thought provoking, eye-opening, and maybe even familiar."--School Library Journal "Te Arepa, who cycles through a believable variety of identities and struggles, is beautifully vivid. The compassionate depiction of the teen's choices, both good and bad, as well as the candid portrayal of life at an all-boys school, packed as it is with drugs, drinking, sex, and violent bullying, will give this significant appeal for fans of character-driven novels where the conclusions aren't very rosy, let alone clearly definitive."--Booklist "Riveting...Into the River is a raw story that rings true. Older teens will devour this fresh, engaging coming-of-age novel about personal identity and poisonous social inequality, the excitement and terror of adolescence, the nuances of friendship and freedom and much more."--Shelf Awareness "Emphasizes the complications of culture, loyalty, and consequences when "there is freedom and then there is everything else."--Publishers Weekly

Author description

Ted Dawe has worked over the years as an insurance clerk, store man, builder's labourer and fitter's mate, and flown hot air balloons over Hyde Park. He's also been a university student, world traveler, high school teacher, and English language teacher. Thunder Road, won both the Young Adult Fiction section and the Best First Book award at the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Children & Young Adults, and Into The River won the Margaret Mahy award, which is "presented annually to a person who has made an especially significant contribution to children's literature, publishing or literacy, and honours New Zealand's leading author for children." Visit him online at TedDawe.com.