The Packing House

When sixteen-year-old Joel Scrivener has a raging nightmare in study hall and someone records it on their phone, he awakens to a living nightmare where everyone knows the secret he's avoided for ten years. Reeling from a series of bullying incidents posted on YouTube and an ill-timed mid-year move, Joel takes to the woods, leaving the bullies and his broken home behind. However, life as a runaway isn t easy. Joel finds it difficult to navigate break-ins, wrestle hallucinations, and elude capture. He races to figure out who his dream-world attacker could be, piecing clues together with flashes of remembered images that play endlessly inside his head. Besides these images, the one constant thought occupying Joel s mind is Amber Walker, the girl he s been in love with for years. Amber sees little beyond the broken boy Joel has become, despite the letters they ve written back and forth to each other. But Joel is stronger and more resilient than he looks, and it s time he convinces Amber of this fact, before he runs out of chances with her for good. "In his debut novel, G. Donald Cribbs has written an emotional wallop about the courage and bravery of a young survivor. The Packing House is a tapestry of nightmares--the images that haunt Joel in his dreams and memories woven together with the painful experiences of a frayed and fractured family life, the take-no-prisoner bullying of adolescence, and the agony of loving and not knowing if it will ever be returned. And yet, Joel's story is one of strength and resilience as he hunts down the source of all this pain--a story Cribbs captures with sharp-eyed and utterly clear veracity. Three cheers to G. Donald Cribbs for endeavoring to tell this tough story and doing it so well." --Brendan Kiely, author of The Gospel of Winter, and co-author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), winner of the Coretta Scott King Award "THE PACKING HOUSE is as an enthralling and important piece of fiction that tastefully and honestly addresses the topic of sexual abuse of minors." --IndieReader About the Author: G. Donald Cribbs has written and published poetry and short stories since high school. Donald is a graduate of Messiah College in English and Education, and currently holds a PA Teacher's Certificate in English and Education. In addition, Donald is currently a graduate student halfway through his master's program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. Somehow, the author has maintained a 4.0, despite working full time and writing during all other interstitial times. He and his wife and four boys reside in central Pennsylvania where the author is hard at work on his next book, the sequel to his debut novel, The Packing House (2016), by Booktrope, tentatively titled Unpacking the Past. Having lived and traveled abroad in England, France, Belgium, Germany, China and Thailand (you can guess where he lived and where he visited), the author loves languages and how they connect us all. Coffee and Nutella are a close second. "