When Gus Shepard’s quiet artistic life is upended by his mother’s death in 2003, he’s sent to the rural town of Livingston, Montana, to live with his estranged woodworking father. For Gus, it’s a place filled only with grief, painful childhood memories, and too much sawdust—until he meets Bridger Owens, a local skateboarder with a rebellious streak.
Drawn together by a deal—Gus will build Bridger a handcrafted board in exchange for skateboarding lessons—the two form an unexpected bond, inspiring each other to reach for bigger goals and make the most of their short summer. What starts as friendship soon blossoms into a tender romance they must keep hidden in a town where everyone already knows each other’s secrets.
Immediately suspicious, Bridger’s jealous skate crew leader, Max Stevens, resents Gus and his growing closeness to his best friend. And the coolest skater girl in Livingston, Tara Shae, senses that Gus, like her, doesn’t quite fit the town’s mold. As whispers turn into confrontations and family pressures mount, Gus and Bridger’s fragile relationship is tested at every turn. Will Gus and Bridger risk everything to hold onto what they’ve found, or will the weight of their separate worlds pull them apart?
When Gus Shepard’s quiet artistic life is upended by his mother’s death in 2003, he’s sent to the rural town of Livingston, Montana, to live with his estranged woodworking father. For Gus, it’s a place filled only with grief, painful childhood memories, and too much sawdust—until he meets Bridger Owens, a local skateboarder with a rebellious streak.
Drawn together by a deal—Gus will build Bridger a handcrafted board in exchange for skateboarding lessons—the two form an unexpected bond, inspiring each other to reach for bigger goals and make the most of their short summer. What starts as friendship soon blossoms into a tender romance they must keep hidden in a town where everyone already knows each other’s secrets.
Immediately suspicious, Bridger’s jealous skate crew leader, Max Stevens, resents Gus and his growing closeness to his best friend. And the coolest skater girl in Livingston, Tara Shae, senses that Gus, like her, doesn’t quite fit the town’s mold. As whispers turn into confrontations and family pressures mount, Gus and Bridger’s fragile relationship is tested at every turn. Will Gus and Bridger risk everything to hold onto what they’ve found, or will the weight of their separate worlds pull them apart?
This view is wasted on me. You’d do so much more with all these colors.
Gus Shepard watched the blue Rocky Mountains and green forested hills glide past his car window. The orange ombre of the lowering sun cast a golden glow over grazing cattle in sloping pastures just beyond the glass. Perennially shy and artistic, Gus always noticed every small detail around him: the color palettes of his surroundings, a stranger’s intricate body language, and how every subject was framed within the scenery of his gaze. Looking past his own freckles and sandy blond hair in the window, Gus surveyed the familiar wildlife from the safe back seat of his father’s red 1969 Chevy Blazer as they sped down the rural road from Bozeman airport. Through the glass, far away, Gus spotted a pair of songbirds skipping from tree to tree. He smiled somberly at their inaudible melodic chirping.
Gus peeled his sight off of the colorful Montana landscape to try and replicate it as just a black-and-white drawing in the timeworn sketchbook on his lap. The scritch of his pencil became the only sound inside the tense car as they drove far from town. Like the many sketchbook pages preceding it, this one soon filled with Gus’s simple nature sketches, each almost lifelike and untainted. When Gus finished the final intricate flourishes of a sparrow’s wing, he signed his name below the drawings and added the date: June 6, 2003. From the rearview mirror, Gus’s stoic father looked up to watch his son check over his work. Dan Shepard felt no need to break the silence.
Gus lifted his worn sketchbook and flipped the paper around its binding to a fresh page. He looked back through his closed window, lost in a daze. He breathed in his nerves and forced out his fears. The Chevy Blazer turned down a small, winding road, and Gus noticed the weathered Livingston, Montana sign he hadn’t seen in thirteen years. Amber sunset melted to a purple evening, and no more city lights lit their way. His father’s car soon crossed the same old army bridge Gus used to collect frogs under. His head swayed as they bumped over the same train tracks he used to practice balancing on, until finally, he saw it—the secluded log cabin that housed all his childhood memories. After all these years, Gus wondered if the home would still smell like his mother’s rosy pink perfume he missed so much. He sighed. Gus shook the thought away.
The Chevy came to a stop in the driveway of his father’s quaint cabin surrounded by pine trees. A small flowing creek trickled nearby. Gus stepped out of the car and surveyed the flat, utilitarian property he remembered so well. Beautiful behemoth mountains loomed far off in the distance, so tall they pierced the white clouds above. To Gus’s right stood his dad’s woodshop with its weathered green sign that read Shepard’s Custom Furniture hanging above it. The wooden placard was covered in shriveled leaves that blew away in the breeze.
Dan Shepard shut his car door. Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he walked around the rear bumper to meet Gus. The taciturn middle-aged lumberjack looked the boy up and down, still not used to his visiting son’s height.
“You’ve grown a lot, Gus,” Dan mumbled as he opened the trunk. “All your stuff is still in your old room.”
Gus tried to offer his father a faint smile, but the gesture was lost as the man forged ahead with his suitcase. Dan paused under the dimming yellow porch light and offered a dull, tired nod to his son.
“Get settled. Need you up early to explain the shop,” Dan informed him.
Gus nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
He was so exhausted. His bones were heavy.
A familiar warmth eased that burden as Gus entered the home he once knew so well. Not much had changed, yet the heat felt different somehow. He walked through the hallway, passing empty log cabin walls. He stopped and stared at the darker squares of wood amid the otherwise sun-bleached paneling. When did he take Mom’s paintings down?
He lugged his suitcase up the creaking wooden stairs to his cramped attic bedroom. Gus looked around the space he’d grown up in. Over the past decade, it had become merely excess storage space. Several dusty boxes towered high.
Gus dropped his bags near his childhood bed, which hadn’t been touched in ages. It stood perfectly made, ready in case he had ever come to visit. Did Dad want me here sooner?
His duvet on the bed was still his old one covered in bucking quarter horses and roaming cowboys. Gus sat down on the spring mattress and absentmindedly placed his sketchbook and leather canvas backpack on the bedside table. But it wasn’t his previous end table. It was something different now—a wooden trunk with deep grooves he had never seen before.
Gus scoped out the object, lost on where it could have come from or how his dad had gotten the heavy thing all the way up to his room. He tilted his head in thought. The trunk had a little brass padlock. Gus tugged the lock down, trying to open the hefty wooden box. It did not budge. He shook his head and shrugged, too tired to think any longer. He pulled off his baggy sweater, faded jeans, and sweaty socks, tossing them to the side to deal with in the morning. Gus yawned wide and turned off the lamp near his headboard. After lying down and pulling his sheets over his torso, he drifted to sleep.
Dan’s screeching tea kettle and the aromatic allure of freshly roasted coffee beans were a natural alarm that woke Gus up just hours later. The morning sunlight poured onto Gus’s soft skin as he rolled over in his boxers. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Alone in the dusty attic, Gus sighed, remembering this was his new normal.
He slugged down the stairs to join his father in the kitchen. Sunny-side eggs and herbed sausages sizzled in a cast-iron skillet. Gus paused in his steps when he saw their wooden dining table set for two. Only two.
“Hey, kid,” Dan grunted as he flipped the eggs onto a plate.
Gus yawned a “Morning” and scraped back an oak chair to take his seat.
Dan placed two plates of fried eggs, crispy sausage links, and buttered toast on the table. He hiked up his overalls before he sat down and poured two cups of coffee from his tin French press: one for himself and one for Gus. Dan took a sip. Coffee caught in his graying beard as he sliced coins of sausage. There was an awkward silence as they both ate their breakfast. Gus hesitantly looked up at his father as he spread huckleberry jam across his toast. They both had been avoiding crucial conversations.
“So. What happened to all of Mom’s pictures?” Gus ventured.
Dan glanced up from the brim of his coffee cup. He said nothing.
“Before she… passed…” Gus cleared his throat. “She said you were lonely way out here. She—”
Dan grunted to avoid Gus’s reach for connection. The aging man stood up from the table and swung on his Carhartt work jacket.
“Finish up,” Dan muttered. “I’m going to the shop.”
Gus sighed and turned to watch Dan plod off. He should have known he wasn’t going to get much out of his pragmatic father.
“What are we working on today?” Gus called out.
“An oak dining set. Two more chairs to square things up,” Dan responded. He grabbed keys off a small hook near the door.
Gus nodded and downed his eggs as his dad pulled on his work boots and exited the cabin. Gus stuffed a last piece of toast into his mouth and followed.
Behind their home sat the large barn that was his father’s woodshop. Gus walked inside to see all sorts of carpentry machines for sawing, sanding, and cutting. Wooden boards lay scattered about, dry sawdust clung to every surface, and motes swirled in the sun gleaming through the wide windows. Gus watched his father lift a huge stack of untreated boards and lower them next to his cluttered workbench.
“Summer job starts now.” Dan adjusted his overalls and looked down at Gus. “May as well put you to work before you’re gone for art college.”
Gus nodded with hesitation. He had never used the machines. Before the divorce, before he and his mother moved to Minnesota, he had grown up only playing in the yard outside while his father worked all day. Now, though, no longer too young to operate the equipment, he was determined to learn so he could spend at least a few good months with his distant dad. He’d rather reconcile over woodwork than remain strangers stuck in the same house all summer.
Dan gestured at Gus. “Grab a couple more of those two-by-fours.”
Gus turned to the wall that held dozens of variously sized boards on organized shelves. He had no idea which ones were two-by-fours but grabbed a stack.
Dan stopped him. “That’s a four-by-four.”
Gus put the lumber back and grabbed some skinnier pieces of wood. They were correct. He struggled to lift the heavy boards onto the bench.
Dan measured some oak and marked it in three places. Gus pulled out a little journal to take notes. His dad lined up each piece of wood, trimmed the ends to equal lengths, and tossed the scraps into a bucket near the shop’s furnace. Gus quickly learned the ins and outs of the machines as his father demonstrated proper techniques and grunted what mistakes would end in a mangled finger. In total, Dan spoke only a short few sentences over the workday. Gus gleaned his dad felt no need to over-chat, and the constant blare of the machines complicated the chore of catching up anyway. When Gus left for a few moments to collect a new armful of heavy boards, the harsh buzzing from the saw seemed deafening.
“Is it always this loud?” Wincing, Gus placed the boards on the workbench and covered his ears as Dan worked on cutting a detailed edge with a particularly grating jigsaw. Dan didn’t hear his son.
“Dad?!” Gus called out.
Still nothing.
Gus tapped Dan’s shoulder, and his father lifted one of his protective earcups.
“What?! Sorry. My hearin’s bad,” he yelled back.
Gus chuckled. “Yeah. No wonder.”
The hours passed. Gus mostly shadowed Dan’s procedures, ran to retrieve more wood, burned excess scraps in the furnace, or cleaned up behind his father. However, he performed well, and Dan soon let Gus test out the smaller machines himself. Dan steamed and bent the oak as Gus assembled chair pieces. Soon father and son worked side by side, both using electric sanders at the same time.
Dan looked over at Gus periodically, checking his form. Gus knew he did something right when his dad would simply nod, saying nothing. However, it wasn’t until Gus was tasked with brushing dark polish onto the smooth wood, revealing its luscious weaving grain, that the first spark of pride in his own carpentry came to him that first day. Polishing, to Gus, felt exactly like painting: each new stroke revealed something beautiful and unexpected.
Toward the end of Gus’s first shift, Dan inspected his son’s technique as he wiped down the set of finished chairs. Polish stains coated every inch of Gus’s painting shirt and overalls. However, as Gus took a step back to let his father appraise his work, Dan nodded his silent approval once again, even offering a rare grin of pride. Gus perked up with satisfaction. Both shoulder to shoulder, Dan nudged Gus with his elbow.
“Good job, kid.”
The shop’s windows were now dark and starry after the long day. Never one to waste time, Dan handed his son a broom to collect and discard all the wood shavings piled around them. He left Gus alone to clean up as he headed back to the cabin. When the door closed, Gus groaned in the dark silence and started sweeping.
Once inside the cabin, Gus collapsed onto his bed. He was sweaty and covered in sawdust. His body ached. But before getting back up to shower, his eyes drifted to the wooden trunk beside him again. An object was tucked behind it. Intrigued, Gus reached over and pulled out a small framed painting of a bitterroot, Montana’s state flower. His chest tightened. It was one of his mom’s favorite pieces from long ago. One of his favorites.
This one too? Why’d he take it down?
Annoyance flickered through Gus, but he pushed it aside. He was too tired. Standing up, he walked to his wall and hung the artwork carefully on an empty nail and stepped back to enjoy it. The pretty pinkish-purple wildflower was tiny, but somehow it could grow strong within all the dry, rocky soil around it. Gus softened. His mother’s bitterroot flower looked perfect on his wall.
Gus’s first week went the same as his first day. Breakfast, woodwork, lunch, woodwork, dinner, bed. Only the type of furniture or decorative carpentry piece they created changed as his father received orders from neighbors or people from more distant towns. A couple from Missoula requested small maple bedside tables. A woman from Helena ordered matching walnut boxes for her husband’s anniversary gift. Dan was well-known in Montana for his quality furniture. Gus enjoyed witnessing his father’s passion in action however non-conversational the man remained. Gus liked the work itself. It passed the time, and he loved finding artistry in whatever way he could find it.
Still, Gus felt more like Dan’s employee than his own son. By his first weekend, he itched to see another face. To try something new.
~
Dan’s fork eased through his cheesy omelet as he finished pouring his morning brew. He took a slow satisfying bite of his eggs alone at the dining table. Gus walked through the kitchen, passing his father, and moved along to the front door. He didn’t sit down for breakfast. Dan regarded his son suspiciously.
“Where are you going?” Dan asked, leaning to the left to view his son, crouched in the doorway lacing his Nike Blazer high-tops.
Gus took a deep breath before standing up to ask his dad a request. “It’s my first day off. I thought I could explore more of Livingston.” Gus looked over. “Can I borrow the car?”
Dan paused. He never really took days off. Why bother? There was so much to do. However, he doubted that reasoning would work on an eighteen-year-old.
“Humpfrh,” Dan grumbled in return, tossing Gus his keys.
Gus smiled, clearly eager but anxious to go see the town on his own.
“Don’t wreck it. Tomorrow we’re back in the shop, bright an’ early,” Dan reminded.
Gus beamed back. “Yes, sir!”
Gus sped through the door and bounded outside.
Dan exhaled a deep long breath as he watched his son race toward the car. Alone at the table, he took a bite of his hash browns and continued eating his breakfast in silence.
Gus twisted the car key to ignite the engine, shifted his father’s Chevy into first gear, and sped out of their gravel driveway. As he coasted down the rural roads to Livingston amid wide pastures, tall mountains, and bright skies, Gus found that he was feeling grand.
The glaring sun around a bend soon forced Gus to pull out his sunglasses, cheap but stylish things his mother gave him a few years back. Gus caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. Memories flashed of riding in his mom’s dinged-up minivan, recapping his school days and joyously singing along with her to NSYNC and Nelly Furtado. He smiled, soaking up the past. Gus then remembered his grandfather had just sold that minivan to cover funeral costs. His chin fell. He pulled the shades off.
He tried reminding himself that she would have wanted this. She’d have wanted him to explore. Maybe the old shops she took him to in town were still around. Maybe he’d spot the same critters she used to paint during their lazy picnics in the park. He knew this venture into the city wouldn’t feel the same alone, but Gus promised himself he’d find the perfect spot to sketch in her honor today. He felt the urge to draw something again after a week away from his sketchbook. He needed it.
Gus boosted the radio louder, trying to psych himself back up. Outside his windows, a few unfamiliar sights passed by: construction workers, chain restaurants, empty parking lots. Soon he found a spot to park and set to walking, passing rotting tree trunks and condo development signs. Strolling through the center of town carrying his sketchbook and canvas backpack, so many forgotten childhood moments rushed back into his mind. Gus decided to window-shop the same stores where he and his mom pretended they could buy toys or artwork, but when he peered into his favorite old-timey candy shop, he found it empty. Out of business. Gus spun a slow circle. The entire street was desolate.
Looking for lunch, Gus was at least relieved to see that Mark’s In & Out, the drive-in diner his dad had always loved, still had their footlong chili dogs on the menu. He also ordered a strawberry ice cream cone, his mom’s favorite.
Eventually, Gus hiked up to Sacajawea Park and found a familiar bench where he’d often sat with his parents. It had a serene view of the park that relaxed him. He remembered the scenery like he’d seen it just yesterday. As quiet hours passed in that one spot, Gus drew busy passersby, the Yellowstone bridge, and the calm lake surrounded by cottonwood trees. His favorite part of his forming landscape was the two adult geese and their five goslings floating near the pebbled shore right before him. When he finished the final feathers of the little bird family swimming in peace, he finally felt welcomed back to his version of Montana.
Scraps: A Gay Skateboarding Romance Novel is a young adult romance focusing on Gus Shepard's time adjusting to living with his dad for the summer in Livingston, Montana. Along with still grieving for his recently deceased mother, he struggles to make friends at first, due to both the rigorous work schedule his father set for him and the leader of the local skate group, Max, who seems to despise him for no reason. Despite this, he soon befriends two people who help him enjoy his time in the small town: Tara, a cool college girl he confides in and bonds with, especially when he realizes they have more in common than he thought, and Bridger, a skateboarder Gus initially feels nervous around and finds hard to resist staring at. Over time, Gus and Bridger's relationship grows to where they feel comfortable around each other. However, their attraction to each other causes internal and external conflict, with them coming to terms with that fact and Max not appreciating having his friend 'stolen' from him.
From page one, this book impressed me with its descriptions. Matthew Francis excellently uses mentions of color, scenery, and senses to create a mood immediately. It ties nicely into Gus's identity as an artist and how he notes small things in nature, like a bird with a broken wing or the colors of flowers and the sky. The descriptions of the different types of craft or skills throughout the story, whether it be woodworking, skateboarding, or drawing and painting, are so detailed that they make it easy for the reader to visualize and immerse themselves in the moment. The dialogue, emotions, and actions make the characters feel like real people, reacting in ways others their age would in their situation. Likewise, the development of romantic, platonic, and familial relationships feels believable and natural for all of the characters.
Content warning for mild sexual content, explicit language, and a brief suicide attempt. I recommend this book to lovers of skateboarding, art, realistic YA romance, or joyful gay romances.