Listened to: "First Boy" by Gary D. Schmidt

Listened to: First Boy by Gary D. Schmidt, 2006, downloaded from Overdrive.com.

Not too bad when considering it's intended audience of grade school aged kids. Narrator sucked though. Not so bad as to suck eggs or suck donkey dick but still suckey.

Cooper Jewett was orphaned from his parents as an infant and raised by his grandparents on their New Hampshire dairy farm. After both grandparents die fourteen year old Cooper is determined to carry on with the 160 acre farm and it's 64 cows all by himself. With the help of a couple neighbors he is managing - just barely.

Pretty soon Cooper is being followed by black sedans and NH Senator [Whatshisname] visits Cooper at school asking questions about his parentage and family. After that other people burglarize his house and steal his birth certificate. A mysterious guy shows up at the farm demanding that Cooper go with him to meet a powerful person. Cooper refuses.

Turns out Cooper is the abandoned child of the President and her husband. Senator [Whatshisname] and the President are competing in the NH primary and [Whatshisname] is trying to expose the President's secret illegitimate birth from fourteen years ago. The President, First Gentleman, and Senator [Whatshisname] are all scumbags. Senator [Whatshisname] gets his comeuppance in the end but I was hoping the First Family would get theirs. They treat Cooper abominably and plan to kidnap him and send him to Nova Scotia for several weeks to keep him away from the media.

Everything turns out okay in the end - of course. Well written and suspenseful but I had to suspend more disbelief than usual because a kids' book does not usually address all the holes a plot has for adult readers. That's okay.