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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When Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s sings “Heaven is a place on earth” I stop whatever I’m doing and sing along. ‘Ooh baby do you know what that’s worth, you make heaven a place on earth’ It happened today, in my truck while driving to Tulsa and a blue-haired lady with a handicap sign hanging…
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I’m a lousy Dad. At least it feels that way sometimes, the feeling you get that you didn’t say enough or share enough or that you put on a mask and didn’t reveal your inner self to your children, that they never really “found you out.” And maybe that’s best, because as my wife often…
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I stood in the tiny foyer of the holy of holies two days ago, the old knotty pine auditorium of the Tabernacle church of Christ, remembering my wedding day, June 15, 1985, and Thom Mason is fidgeting and pacing, preparing to walk down the aisle and give away his daughter Karen to the likes of…
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He said goodbye in the same graceful and light-hearted way that he lived, revelling in his answers to aggressive sales folks on the phone when asked why he was cancelling his phone service or subscriptions, “The reason I’m cancelling is I’m dying, I’m going home.”
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Leaving Wittenberg after a European breakfast of assorted cheeses, Nuremberg sausage, fruit, danishes, croissants, tea and coffee, we drove through the German countryside near Potsdam on our way to Berlin. Crisp asphalt lanes lined with white wooden posts streamed past our periphery like toppled bowling pins and leafy hardwood trees formed a canopy over our…
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Thursday was wild card day so we chose a city of interest between Friday’s Berlin walk-about and Rothenburg. Martin Luther is a famous catalyst for the Protestant reformation and in the year 1517 he posted 95 reasons why indulgences, buying and selling absolution for sins, was contrary to the standard of sola scriptura, or by…
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For a brief moment we touched 180 kph on the autobahn, but now we drove on cobblestone streets lined by structures dating back to 1170. Rothenburg ob der Tauber ( red fortress over the Tauber river), is our home for two days. Amongst the ruin of a city called the “most German of German” cities…
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To the train we skipped along a trail by the lake, under a bridge, into a tunnel, to Rathaus, or council house where the city government is located. We ate bratwurst and currywurst and walked to get gelato. Then canoes on the Alster river, a network of lazy canals winding behind huge beautiful homes with…
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After breakfast we opened the French doors as a breeze gently entered our room off sun-drenched Lake Alster. Just as a breeze blew in on Pentecost in the book of Acts. Just as that same breeze ripples through the lives of my family in a non-coercive way. Gently, hopefully, faithfully, lovely. I listened to my…
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“See dad, this is why I love Europe.” Lauren chirped as I awaited the definitive progressive announcement of civilization, a word picture that sums it all up. “Hmm, what is it?” I intoned with jet lag weariness. “They have armoires!” “What’s an armoire?” said Jenna. God bless my cultured children. This morning we awoke to…
