Every town has stories beneath its streets.
Some are buried beneath abandoned mines.
Others beneath baseball fields, family tables, and memories that refuse to disappear.
Bespoke is where I share those stories.
Featured Book
Seven Hills
A novel by Brent Taylor
In the fictional mining town of Jasper, Oklahoma, three childhood friends come of age beneath the shadow of the Seven Hills—towering remnants of a mining boom that brought prosperity to their community while leaving scars that will outlast them all.
Grace Ryan, Percy Walker, and Clay Boyd share a childhood shaped by baseball, friendship, faith, and the rhythms of small-town life. But as they grow older, Jasper begins to change. The mines that once sustained the town have left behind poisoned streams, buried dangers, and questions few people are willing to ask.
When Grace returns home from college, she sees Jasper differently. Her hometown seems to be changing. Percy dreams of becoming a writer and searches for a life beyond Jasper. Clay is deeply faithful to his home and family.
As their paths diverge, each must decide what loyalty means to a hometown that has given them both belonging and loss.
Seven Hills is a story of friendship, memory, courage, and the complicated love we carry for the places that made us.
Books for Sale
Seven Hills will be Available to purchase October 2026
Stories
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Tuesday August 22 When my brother the doctor is not on call, he decompresses by setting his smart phone to airplane mode. I am on airplane mode at this moment, serene at 39,000 feet viewing the fruited plain from a 737, untethered from the constancy of digital connection and liberated from the tyranny of the…
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On a recent vacation, I was driving in Denver and saw out of the corner of my eye the passenger window coming down at a busy intersection. My friend Bob rolls down the window and has a bill crumpled in his hand. He yells out at a gritty, ragged homeless man who is seated but…
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I always loved talking to Harry Whittaker. He made you feel better than you had the right to feel about yourself. We played the same position on the football team, wide receiver and cornerback, and during scrimmages, we blocked and pass covered one another. On one particular play from scrimmage, Harry was getting pretty vocal…
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They don’t make cars like they used to. Once we broke down in the Texas panhandle and instead of getting out of the vehicle, our family road the lift pole all the way up to the ceiling while the mechanic worked on our car as we made sure Greg didn’t open the door and plunge…
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I remember watching my Dad fold a road map on vacation while driving the highway. It is a lost art and the original texting while driving. Those maps had memory, and if you ignored the memory creases, there could be a thousand ways to fold the map, but only if you got in a hurry.…
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Before we built our home in 2005, the 12 acre site was grass and trees and water along with the bleached skeletons of cattle piled in a place our kids called the boneyard. I have lived in 22 homes, if you count college dorms and my in-laws basement. This sounds nomadic, and yet, 22 may…
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It’s 5:20 a.m. and the house is quiet. Jenna is getting married June 24th. The young adults bunking here for the wedding, are fast asleep. I have a faint recollection of sleeping until noon, but it is a distant memory. The dawn floats a mist over the pond like steam from my coffee cup while…
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My mom, Charlotte Taylor, recently attended a York University retreat and was challenged to write and she did, writing a story called, Country Driving. Mom instilled in her children a love of story. She read to us, her captive but nevertheless attentive audience, as we drove to California or Florida or Mt. Rushmore. She read…
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Last summer my friend Bob and I were in Denver at a fly fishing outfitter admiring the gear and clothing. It was in that moment of idealistic longing that we decided to go trout fishing. Neither of us fish much. But the river called to us like the sirens singing to Delmar and Pete in…
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I’m sitting in skybox 306 in the BOK center and the Broken Arrow band is playing Pomp and Circumstance as 1,137 Broken Arrow Seniors stream down eight aisles like ants who have discovered a donut on the sidewalk. This isn’t anything like my graduation except it was also in a gymnasium, where I sat by…
