Ken Berryhill

The Treehouse Society Ken Berryhill

Publisher Marketing: From its rags to riches founding seaport town Ocean Vista is a beautiful, boardwalk casino tourists' haven. With its towering glass buildings, manicured lawns, and sculptured landscape the very essence of the so-called 'good life' abounds. The affluent and the politically powerful spend their summers there to bask in the reality of nocturnal riverboat gambling, exotic night life and seaport activities. Several miles north, across the railroad tracks, is another standard of living. A backward, racially mixed, never talked about, low economy community of people, that time has essentially forgotten dwells there, unnoticed by the rich who are their neighbors. The people who reside there call Ocean Vista the "society;" whereas, the Ocean Vista seaport community regards the northern side of the railroad tracks as the "township." The township's living conditions do not compare to the wealth displayed on the society side. Their community consists of rows of shot gun shacks, a feed store, greasy-spoon diners, an old, neglected, dusty, brick grammar school and farmland. For years, there had been a political, social, and economic rift between the two neighboring communities. Four poor township grammar school boys take a hot summers day break from building a tree house and discover a smoldering old oak file cabinet and desk in the creek bed. What do the boys find? What motivates the township people to change their lives? Will there ever be harmony between the two communities?