ARLY'S RUN

In a sequel to Arly (1989), the spirited young picker's quest for a new home and family takes him along a rocky road. After his boat overturns on Lake Okeechobee and his companion, Brother Smith, is lost, Arly Poole finds himself branded and forced into a work gang, where he makes a friend in old Coo Coo. After months of hard, unpaid field labor, the two escape and take up with a wandering evangelist. Then a hurricane howls past, and Arly and a few other stunned survivors are left wandering a devastated landscape. Peck dedicates this book to Florida's migrant workers, with many of whom he worked and spoke, and his picture of their life (as it was in 1928) is a vivid one; even more compelling is his account of the hurricane and its aftermath. Eventually, Arly hooks up with an older woman, Mrs. Day, and a young orphan, Tar; Coo Coo reappears (then dies in a gun battle that, compared to the storm, seems anticlimactic), as do Brother Smith and several people from the previous book, including Liddy Tant and even Binnie Hoe, Arly's beloved teacher. By the end, Arly has his family. A well-told story. (Fiction. 11-14)