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Street of Storytellers
by Dough Wilhelm
Genre: YA Multicultural Thriller
Release Date: September 2019
Rootstock Publishing

Summary:

Luke is 15, and he’s mad at his dad. He blames his parents’ recent divorce on his father’s obsession with finishing a book about a lost ancient civilization in a dangerous part of Asia.

But his father badly wants his son to understand — so he brings Luke to Peshawar, an age-old crossroads city in Pakistan’s North West Frontier. To punish his dad, Luke refuses to learn anything about the project; instead he’s drawn into the strange, intriguing Old City, where a frightening new extremism is on the rise.

Luke is dazzled by Danisha, but in the city’s strict Pashtun culture they can’t ever be seen together. He’s recruited by her brother to assist the jihadis — but he also bonds with Yusuf, an Afghan refugee who knows what could happen. Then there are the musicians Luke befriends, and a mysterious Sufi teacher who opens his eyes.

Street of Storytellers is intensely suspenseful. It’s about three families across two cultures … about two world religions, Islam and Buddhism … about music, Western and Eastern … and about how modern extremism affects ordinary families. It’s about an ancient true story the world has almost forgotten. And it’s about learning to think for yourself, even if that puts your life at risk.

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About the Author

Doug Wilhelm is a fulltime writer and editor in Weybridge, Vermont. His 16 previous books include The Revealers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), a novel about bullying that has been the focus of reading and discussion projects in well over 1,000 schools, and continues to be part of the curriculum in middle schools across the country.

As a young journalist in the early 1980s, Doug left his newspaper job to spend two years in Pakistan, India and Nepal. He traveled, wrote, taught English and worked on what he originally planned as a nonfiction book about his experiences, which years later grew into Street of Storytellers.

Doug’s other books include three more young-adult novels, a biography of Alexander the Great for young readers, and 10 books for the Choose your Own Adventure series.

Website: http://www.dougwilhelm.com/