A novel about friendship, buried secrets, and the price of uncovering the truth.
Welcome
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
Seven towering hills of chat ring the town—waste rock from the mines, pale and glassy in the sun. In 1954, twelve-year-old Grace Ryan arrives and quickly learns that Jasper is not a quiet place, and that danger lingers just beneath its surface.
Drawn by an old survey map, a brass tag marked B6, and questions the adults refuse to answer, Grace, Percy, and Clay uncover hidden tunnels, poisoned water, buried records, and a silence that has protected powerful men for years.
Seven Hills will be Available to purchase October 2026
Stories
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Brandon and I launched our kayaks just below the Cherokee Bridge waterfall unsure of the legality of our venture not to mention the health risk. We set off to kayak the Caney River, because we felt like it, in the mold of Sir Edmund Hillary who once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer…
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My brother Toby is six years younger than me. As a three-year old lad, he was universally adored by teenage girls at church, wooed and cooed over because his dark eyelashes fluttered like lazy cabana fans and his black hair was licked by cream-fed cows at the center of his hairline in a cool-to-be-square duck-tail.…
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I once saw a list of things Dad’s should teach their sons. How to balance a checking account, how to ask a girl out, how to change a tire, and so on. But as I think about my failure to teach my son these skills, I realize how much nurturing help I’ve had. Saturday I…
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My wife reminds me occasionally that I forgot to propose, and that our marriage certificate was not notarized properly under the laws of New Jersey. We’ve been not married for 29 years now. To assuage my guilt, awash in the glut of new age engagements initiated by princes in hot air balloons accompanied by life-sized…
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This morning, I read several lies and truths about domestic violence. The internet has a way of making us all experts…and idiots. I did find this one interesting. “Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems accepted wife-beating (today’s term is domestic violence) as a valid exercise of a husband’s authority over his wife. One exception,…
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I dragged Karen to the Community Center last night and listened to Roy Blount, Jr. speak about the literary world and about his great friend and favorite author, Charles Portis, famous for writing the book True Grit and as well as other books, The Dog of the South and Norwood. Mr. Portis prefers the earlier…
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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…
Bespoke 