Bøger af Ted West

He survived the loss of his mother in childbirth.His grieving father became a man of God.>At 14, Lane Belding needed to get in trouble ... almost any kind would do. It was the Eisenhower Fifties, and the meanest bully at school was coming after him. Lane knew exactly why-Lane looked just like the bright, popular, A-student minister's son he was. But if he got in a little trouble, it would prove to the bully he was "okay." So he turned to "Reno," his secret, rebellious inner self. Reno knew all about trouble. And the plan worked! But unfortunately, getting in trouble necessarily involved Lane's disciplinarian father. And as the respected minister of Palo Alto's elite Episcopal church, Lane's widower father had no sense of humor. None. Coming of age in the so-called "conformist" Fifties, Lane and his friends were finding it just as difficult to grow up as in any other teen generation. And for high-spirited Lane to capitulate to the Draconian restrictions of his strict Canadian father ... well, he refused. He was hungry to experiment with "wrong" things-smoking cigarettes, finding out about girls, drinking beer, sneaking out at night. His friends' parents took such things in stride. But when Lane got a short haircut his father hated, he was grounded not for a few days but two long months-until it grew out! His father was the church's "spiritual leader," but to Lane, a defenseless and furious captive of the household, his father was hateful. Conceding to his Victorian standards was to surrender Lane's own life spirit! In his misery, Lane Belding finds an unlikely ally. His father's young curate at church, seeing into Lane's pain, becomes a sympathetic confidante ... and just in time! Lane and his friends are entering a period when teen experimentation leads to serious consequences. Teen pregnancy, destructive drinking, vandalism, encounters with the police ... all enter their young lives, threatening the direst consequences. The consequences are so profound, in fact, that at their peak, they expose Lane's father and his own desperately twisted ethics. In his father's house are many mansions ... someambitious young Lane Belding dared not enter ...>In deceptively serene 1950s Palo Alto, decadesbefore Silicon had a "valley," finding his way wasa solitary safari across threatening lands ...through violent, soul-defining choices ... casting>But Lane Belding would find a way. Life, in allits conflicts, false starts and misguided truths, wasworth the battle. He would find his way -- or goout with one very loud bang!

A California Travesty...Beautiful young Proz, the Golden State's famed trillionaire heiress, is bummed ... so bummed. But the Duke, Proz's doting father, knows how to cheer her up-he'll declare a party! Everyone in Fabulous Santa Lola ... and from all points Respectable ... will attend. It'll be The Big Event of 1984! Yet the Duke's stratagem has worked too well-the Great Party is going off the rails! There are raised voices ... spilled cocktails ... indecent oaths ... gunshots in night fog! Will lovely Proz and young Neddy, her new New Jersey husband, ever smile again...

Mario Andretti said of Closing Speed author Ted West, "I've known Ted forever; our paths ran together for many years. He worked hard to earn the respect he gets, and I'm sure the enthusiast world will now enjoy his fiction."One of racing's "young lions," Ted West used his keen sense of observation and his immense writing talent to define the endurance racing war between Porsche's 917 and the Ferrari 512 immortalized in Steve McQueen's Le Mans.Sent to Europe by Road & Track in 1970 at age 27, West quickly came to know the racers, their women, and the complex lives they shared at Brands Hatch, Monza, the Targa Florio, Spa, the Nurburgring, and Le Mans. Their lives were as dramatic off the track as their racing was on it.West's friend, Porsche and F1 racer Brian Redman, has noted that of the racers who filled the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix starting grid two-thirds of them were dead by 1972. The stakes were never higher.In 1970, with cars reaching 248 mph at Le Mans, racing was at its fastest, most exciting, most competitive ... with an underlying gravity that was both breathtaking and horrifying.Closing Speed is a vivid and ultimately heartbreaking portrait of racing in Europe in 1970 -- Porsche vs. Ferrari -- when competitive pride, sexual desire, and racing fate collided head-on.