No Excuses
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In this Young Adult novel, 16-year-old Skeets Stearns is a farm boy from Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom who finds refuge in the rugged mountain behind his family farm. Roaming the mountain has made him strong, like the legendary catamount wild cat. But his physical strength has yet to give him the courage to date pretty, popular Becky Winslow, star of the high school girls' track team.
Before enlisting as a pilot in the Navy, New York City-raised Bill MacColl had been a contender to make the US Olympic Team as a decathlete. But that dream ended when his plane was shot down in combat in the Vietnam jungle. Trying to put his life back together, MacColl moves in with the Stearns family in Vermont, counting on the fresh air of the farm and the mountains to heal him.
An unexpected friendship blooms when MacColl trains Skeets to compete in the Eastern States High School Track and Field Championship. Will Skeets win the championship, and the heart of Becky Winslow? Will Bill learn to accept his disability? No Excuses is the story of transformation, triumph, and resilience as two opposites struggle together to better their lives.
Stephen Harris
Stephen L. Harris is Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University, Sacramento, where he served ten years as department chair. A Woodrow Wilson Fellow, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. A member of the Society of Biblical Literature, his publications include Understanding the Bible (8th edition, 2011); The Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (with Robert Platzner); Classical Mythology: Images and Insights (with Gloria Platzner); Exploring the Bible; and Fire Mountains of the West: The Cascade and Mono Lake Volcanoes, a survey of volcanic hazards on the U.S. Pacific Coast; and for National Geographic Books, Restless Earth, a study of global earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. He contributed the chapter on "Archaeology and Volcanism" to the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes (Academic Press, 2000).
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