RUNNERS
BOOK TWO IN THE OAKLEY SERIES
By Phil Oakley
Historical Fiction / Depression Era / Family Saga
Publisher: Stoney Creek Publishing
Pages: 206
Publication Date: March 31, 2025
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SYNOPSIS
From the author of Little Hatchet, this gripping historical saga continues—a powerful story of resilience, family, and the price of ambition. Perfect for fans of epic generational tales and action-packed historical fiction.
Walter Oakley and his wife, Ada, used the westward expansion of America to establish themselves as model citizens in the town of Telegraph, Texas. Now, they watch in despair as their children lurch from one crisis to another — rum running, train-hopping outlaws, shattered dreams. With one child dead and another on the wrong side of the law, Walter and Ada struggle to keep their younger children on the straight and narrow. But trouble and temptation beckon as Prohibition and the Great Depression give way to the horrors of World War II. Will hope survive the chaos?
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REVIEW
HALL WAYS REVIEW: History, hardship, and a whole lot of heartache make Runners a riveting read. Runners is the second book in the Oakley series, a family saga based on author Phil Oakley’s family history. Characters within the pages parallel the names of the author’s real family members, and the narrative is based on the stories they told over the years. Books one and two span the Civil War, the Prohibition era, and World War II.
I
knew I was jumping in on the second installment in the series, so I read the synopsis and
some reviews of Little Hatchet, book one, before getting started. It helped. From
that, I gathered that Walter, a primary character from book one, grows up, and
he and wife Ada (the author’s actual grandparents) and their seven children are the focus of Runners.
I
recommend reading this series in order, and here’s why. Even coming in with
some information from the prior story, I still struggled a bit because I didn’t truly have the big picture, know the details of what
each character brought to the story, or understand the relationships. Though Walter and Ada have seven children, Runners really focuses on
two of the sons, secondarily, two of the daughters, and many references to a deceased son. I was left wondering about the rarely mentioned other two daughters. Add to this the quantity of peripheral characters (including several characters
with the same name), it is a lot to manage. A family tree or even a short
bring-to-date placed at the beginning of the book would have been immensely
helpful in keeping all the characters straight, and I think that would help all
readers, not just those who missed book one.
Despite
my confusion, Runners kept me deeply immersed in this family’s stories. Case
in point: at one point, I had given myself an hour to read, and when I looked
up, two hours had passed! And I decided to read another hour…hour-ish. Rich
descriptions and factoids (Thirty-five cents for a meal?! Monthly rent for $22.75?!)
will place readers right in the middle of the stories and time period, and
interestingly, the narrator jumps in throughout to tell readers how things turned
out. It feels very much like author Phil Oakley is telling family tales as we
sit around the kitchen table together – a reminder that this is barely a
fictionalized story. It is an efficient device because we want to know more,
and I’d have been happy to have the author show, rather than tell, us more.
“The
behavior of their children was a persistent puzzle troubling Ada and Walter.”
Walt’s
and Ada’s collective pain and helplessness are palpable as their children make one
poor decision after another. Worse, even as the children grow into adults, they
seem slow to understand the heartbreak they’ve inflicted on their parents. This
passage was particularly poignant:
“Again, Ray missed the irony of what was going on around
him. There were more rules in these camps than in his mother’s kitchen, and at
her dining table. The work was harder than any Ray had ever done on his
father’s farm, or at football practice. Most of the money Ray was earning wound
up in someone else’s pocket. Half-a-dozen times since Ray had been riding on
freight trains, he had been arrested, almost arrested, or beaten by men with
clubs. This information didn’t take root in Ray’s mind. All he could see was
that he was free and having a grand adventure.”
I
bought the eBook so I’d have the final copy and am pleased it’s so cleanly
edited, which seems to be the exception, not the rule, these days. The very few
errors I noticed aren’t enough to distract most readers (in the unlikely event they'll be noticed at
all). Oakley's writing is smooth and has a natural flow; he's clearly a natural storyteller.
At the book's conclusion, I was unsure of how many years had passed between the final chapter and the
epilogue, and Runners ends somewhat abruptly. However, it does end with a
small ray of hope (and that’s a double entendre), and the final page after the
About the Author section assures us that a third book, titled Longhorn,
is coming. I’ll definitely go back to Little Hatchet and read this
family’s fascinating story from the beginning so I’ll be ready.
To learn more about the book, look for #LSLLRunners on your preferred social media platform.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phil Oakley is a novelist and veteran journalist with experience in the motion picture industry. He is a retired regional executive with The Walt Disney Company (ABC News), a former director of the Louisiana Film Commission, and a retired editor with the Dallas Morning News. He covered presidents and presidential campaigns beginning with Lyndon Johnson and ending with George W. Bush. He was a television and radio anchor and reporter with national awards from Columbia University, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and a National Headliner Award. He began work on his first novel in 1964 while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written nine novels.
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