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A second launch for Scouts’ Honor by Carlos E. Cortés? Yes, please!
We celebrated Scouts’ Honor at the Civil Rights Institute of Inland Southern California in Riverside on August 31 — but if you missed it, don’t worry. We have an encore!
This time, it’s in Rancho Cucamonga at the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts & Crafts. The program runs from 3:00-4:30 PM. Admission is FREE, but an RSVP is requested: https://tinyurl.com/RSVP-ScoutsHonor
Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts & Crafts, 5131 Carnelian Street, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
About Scouts’ Honor
Dead bodies hadn’t been all that common at Boy Scout Camp Matulia. Nestled in the rugged, forested, relentlessly hilly southwestern corner of Missouri, it was an accident waiting to happen. Consider the odds. Four hundred and fifty young teenagers arriving every other Monday for a twelve-night camping session. Of course, mishaps occurred. The death of Boy Scout Harry Vincent would wreak havoc on the lives of those who tried to put the death behind them.
Reading Scouts’ Honor is like descending into a Hieronymus Bosch painting that has been repurposed for the mid-twentieth-century United States. The story begins in 1948 with the discovery of a young teenager’s dead body at a Midwestern Boy Scout summer camp. The novel then develops as a raucous coming-of-age story, a perplexing maybe-murder mystery, a carnival of off-beat characters, and a communal cover-up involving, in some cases, reluctant collaborators.
Praise for Scouts’ Honor
Scouts’ Honor is a fascinating look at the culture of teenage boys just after World War Il in the Midwest. Many of us grew up in Carlos’s world, which he portrays in both a disturbing and endearing way. His insights into the American condition are bottomless. – Marc Brenman, When Hate Groups March Down Main Street: Engaging a Community Response
This fast-paced mystery involving four Boy Scouts at summer camp raises thorny ethical questions of contemporary relevance. The scouts’ loyalties to each other collide with truth-telling about the death of one of the four. On my own honor, this is an intelligent, thought-provoking, timely book that you’ll enjoy from start to finish. – Ellen Summerfield, author of Motherwise: an anthology of poems
Carlos E. Cortés is the Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. His books include his memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time and an award-winning book of poetry, Fourth Quarter: Reflections of a Cranky Old Man. Cortés served as Cultural Consultant for the Dreamworks film, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and received the 2009 NAACP Image Award for being the Creative/Cultural Advisor for Nickelodeon’s “Dora the Explorer” and “Go, Diego, Go!.” He also travels the country performing his one-person autobiographical play, “A Conversation with Alana: One Boy’s Multicultural Rite of Passage.”
