MCVEIGH, LAURA
If you could stretch time like elastic, what would you change?
Ten-year old Lenny wants to save his home, Roseville, Louisiana, from the sinkhole that threatens to destroy it. His mother, Mari-Rose, unable to cope and dreaming of a better life, has abandoned him. His father, Jim, has returned from war suffering from PTSD. Lenny is homeless, sleeping rough in the bayou swampland, and his only true friends in the world are young Lucy Albert, the lonely town librarian, and long-retired schoolteacher Miss Julie Betterdine Valéry who is still waiting on the return of her husband, Stanley, sent to war in Korea in 1952. Travelling between two storylines the first taking place in 2011 in the Ubari Sand Sea in Libya, the second along the banks of False River, Louisiana, when the ripple effects of the Great Recession, pollution, environmental destruction and the rapidly rising waters are causing whole towns to empty out all along the Bayou, LENNY is a story about how we treat our planet and each other. It examines the nature of time and reality, conflict, family and love, and explores how hope and imagination can save us
