WHISKEY DICK (The Circle City Series)

By Eric Bergreen

It's the summer of 1992, in the city of Corona, California, a place that three best friends have always called home. Ricky, Derek and Aaron have gone to school with each other their whole lives and over the course of their last few years of high school have only become closer. The three consider themselves brothers and even work the same job, in the kitchen of a retirement home called Corona Meadows. They are always together and share their deepest secrets with no one else. But there are stories, in each of their pasts, they've never spoken about with anyone before.Ricky Sinfield is eighteen and is a recent graduate of Centennial High. He's held a job, at the old folk's home, for a couple months and is considered to be pretty responsible. One night, after his shift, he finds himself in the room of one of the residents. A man named Frederick Stanley, thought to be the oldest living person in Corona and who harbors a dark secret from almost a hundred years ago. Once the two are acquainted, Ricky reads a newspaper article to Frederick about a girl who has gone missing in the area. Later, when they learn that she's been murdered they share their pasts and are shocked to discover their dark stories are quite similar and he urges Ricky to share his story with his friends too.Derek Dunne is nineteen and has been out of school for just over a year. He too works in the kitchen at Corona Meadows, with his friends and he also has a dark secret he's never spoken of. After listening to Ricky's tale, he is compelled to seek out the old man and learn more about him and tell him his own terrible story. A story that involves dragons and is quite a bit like Frederick's own. After learning that another child has gone missing, Derek finds it in himself to look for clues about the boy's disappearance but discovers something even darker the more he searches. He knows then that he must reach out to his friends to explain his awful past.Aaron Burnett is eighteen. He's the son of the fire captain at station No.1 in Corona and a recent high school graduate as well. He trades off shifts washing dishes in the kitchen of the retirement home with Ricky and Derek but has grown tired of the work and longs for something more. When he hears his friends' stories, at first, he doesn't want to believe them. Then he comes to realize just how true they must be, because he too has been hiding a dark, terrible secret, an event that happened just three years prior.As the boys and the old man talk and learn more about each other's dreadful pasts it becomes apparent to them all that an evil darkness has returned to the peaceful city of Corona. A darkness that started when Frederick was a boy, before the turn of the century. One that he and his friends were able to stop once and that he prays Ricky, Derek and Aaron can put an end to, for good.Come back on a journey with three friends, who are as close as brothers, as they live their young lives and get caught up once again in a dark mystery of violence and despair. Come back and learn how the darkness started in 1896 and find out why it returned in 1982, 1985 and 1989. Understand why it has risen up again, now, in 1992 and is taking the lives of children in a city once known as the Lemon Capitol of the World. Come back and learn about the first ten years of a colony founded as South Riverside, a place that would later become Corona, California. Come back to the late 1800's, to a place where a kind man helped build an industry with pride and then started a slow decent into anger and hopelessness. A man who worked for the South Riverside Land & Water Co. named Gillhooley but who in town was known as Whiskey Dick.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1982936789
• ISBN13: 9781982936785
• Release Date: August 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 374 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"