Awarded a 1961 Newbery Honor, Old Ramon tells the timeless coming-of-age story of a young boy who spends a summer with an old shepherd in the Mojave Desert. He leaves his textbooks behind for real life lessons with Ramon as his mentor. He learns not only how to care for the sheep but how to overcome fear, how to face death and responsibility, and the difference between being alone and being lonely. Written in Schaefer’s charming and engaging style, the novel details a boy’s discovery of both the value of friendship and the hardship of life.

Beautiful gardens growing profusely using ancient gardening secrets, rabbits that talk, bees that attack on command, ancient Aztec spirits that watch from trees and rocks. These are part of Ramons real world. Beautiful gardens precisely measured and prepared, scientific results calculated to give increased yields. These are also a part of Ramons real world. Ramon is an agronomist caught between two worlds, the ancient spiritual world of fantasy of his mother and the modern world of his father.

Perhaps William Ramon Daniel Chang was always destined to live a life full of heartache, hardships, and turmoil. His mother, who herself was abandoned by her own mother, treated little Willie and his father, Ramon, badly. She was more in love with alcohol and fornicating with random men than spending time with her family.

1920. The Killer begins: I want to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty years after it happened solely because my wife and Senor Buck Johnson insist on it. Myself, I don't think it a good yarn. It hasn't any love story in it; and there isn't any plot. Things just happened, one thing after the other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose if a fellow wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of it. Anyway, here goes; and if you don't like it, you know you can quit at any stage of the game. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.