An underdog loses again—or does he? See reader reviews of Butterfly Powder and the Mountains of Iowa at Amazon. A land conspiracy that endangers his family’s farm, and a smooth-talking rival out to steal his girl, aren’t all that a laid-back teen, Gilbert Perles, faces in the tumultuous mid-1960s. He must also contend with hopelessly eccentric parents, an overly active imagination, and uncanny bad luck. Gilbert, urged on by his equally hapless friends, decides to fight back. Unfortunately, his well-intentioned schemes always backfire until a selfless act earns him a satisfying and unexpected victory over his rival. Yet, even in triumph, bad luck works against the young man and destroys him in an unanticipated way. Gilbert encounters his rival again three years later in chaotic Vietnam, a place where the price of failure is steep. The soldier returns home broken. Like before, even in victory he loses what he most wanted. Or does he?

A cave adventure turns perilous as history raises a mystery Guy Toulouse is an unmotivated high school student obsessed with his self-image and a girl out of his reach. When he flees to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State to escape his troubles in Seattle, he doesn’t expect to encounter a dangerous gangster, a mystery surrounding 16th-century European buccaneers, and a hidden cave with a grisly history. Nor does he expect to discover a connection between the historical mystery and a recent unexplained death or to become trapped underground with a too-smart girl he dislikes. To escape from the cave, he needs to call on resources he didn’t know he had and re-think what—and who—is important to him in order to survive. The trouble is Guy doesn’t know if he is up to the job.

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