The Woods

By David Plante and Jeff Cannady

South Richard Street has rules you learn without anybody explaining them. One of the biggest is simple: stay out of the woods.

In 2014, a kickball rolls past the tree line and a high school senior chases it without thinking. One step into the shadows, and the world shifts. Cars are older. The streets are quieter. And the rules are different. The woods are not just woods. They are a portal.

He lands on April 1, 1968, three days before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and suddenly survival means more than finding his way back home. Taken in by Mama Sherry at the South Richard Home for Boys and Girls, he is forced to live inside a time where segregation is real, heat comes from firewood, and every meal feels like both comfort and struggle. As the kids prepare for their biggest tradition, a fierce kickball game that decides who works chores for weeks, he learns the hard truth that history is not a lesson. It is a weight. And knowing what is coming can be its own kind of burden.

The Woods is a South Richard Street story about time, family, and the moments that shape who we become. Sometimes the past is not behind you. Sometimes it is waiting in the trees.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GHJHJD4H
• ISBN13: 9798244362848
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 28 Pages
• Weight: 0.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 5.0" x 8.0"