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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The peso will buy you fewer enchiladas today, pollsters are leaping from tall buildings, stocks are limit down, and my son is moving to Canada, which wasn’t the reason for the Canadian Immigration web site crash, but rather an interesting coincidence. What an election evening and I’m fairly apolitical. I sat watching the wide-eyed dour…
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“Can you see well enough to read the Bible?” She said, “No, and I can’t really make out your face, but I can see that your shirt is checkered.” I lied and told her I was handsome and she replied graciously, “I can tell by your voice.”
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When my eldest daughter was five years old, she told a story to her younger siblings that is false, yet absolutely true. She informed her brother and sister that her lentil-sized ear tag was Cherokee Indian…and that the rest of her was pilgrim. While this is not correct in a biological sense, it is nevertheless…
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As I showered next to a field of corn in Wisconsin I realized that this is no Hampton Inn. The rustic wood shower provides moderate screening from the house and barns south and west, but the view is entirely uninhibited north and east where dry corn stalks curve along the hill, the rustling ghosts of…
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Last night I sat on the visitor side of Custer Stadium. The only other time I sat on the visitor side was when I was 12 years old and Tinker Owens played for Miami and they played Col-Hi. There wasn’t enough room on the home grandstand that night. But last night, I watched from there…
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A good friend of mine, Steve Osborn, once referred to me as his summertime friend. He attended Oklahoma University and I attended Harding University. As college undergraduates, we mostly saw each other in the summer. We were connected by our faith, growing up together on the basketball court, at the church house, and graduating from…
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These are the salad days of my son and daughters, my nephews and nieces, not that they are cold and green, rather that it’s their heyday, their walk in the sun, although salad, like the heyday of the young, can quickly go from crisp and cool to limp and warm, in an East of Eden…
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A few nights ago storms drifted up from the central plains of Oklahoma, but they mostly missed us, so Karen and I relaxed on the back deck and stared east at a wall cloud, savoring a cool night in August. Although the rain missed us, we sat together and watched a light show like children…
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What is astounding is not that I remember any of that, but that Mary Brock remembers. Would Mrs. Brock be surprised that the kid who was good at math is now an amateur poet? Or did she already know, because that is what teachers do, help us become who we are? It’s the reason why…
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I was holding Jude when I realized why I steal babies. We were at Jace and Carly Davis’ wedding and Jude looked like he wanted me to hold him so I held out my arms and he held out his and we sashayed about the dance floor doing the Baby locomotion. More about baby stealing…
