Above the Clouds: The Back Story

Carl Allen Hampton is a successful real estate developer in Detroit. Born in rural East Texas as the civil rights era ramped up, he spent most summers with his dad, Bradley, in Detroit. This story unpacks his early years growing up in an extended family and learning valuable life lessons.

For some reason, his life seems to always get turned upside down. First was the divorce of his parents, Bradley and Rachel. This dovetails right into the breakup with his childhood girlfriend, Jackie Hunt. Things get worse as he is one of the kids helping to integrate Marshall public schools as a seventh grader. Life seems to settle down, and things seem to go smoothly for a while.

He has a new girlfriend, Michelle Burns, who lives the next street over from Jackie. The summer before his senior year at Marshall High School, he's in Detroit, working at a gas station. He bumps into Felicia Barnes, whom he rode ten-speed bikes with a couple of summers back. She and her friend Van Howard stop by the station where he works to buy gas for Van's car.

The city has worn him out, and he is so ready to go home. The day before he is to fly back to Marshall, he is locked up for grand theft auto! If he thought his life was upside down before he went to jail, the ride is about to get bumpier. Rachel is livid with Bradley when she realizes he has allowed him to drive the eleven hundred miles from Detroit to Marshall alone. He has problems with Michelle when she finds out a young lady named Pam Matthews, from Detroit, who attends Wiley College, made the trip with him. Then all hell breaks loose.

This book has it all, romance, heartbreak, suspense, all set in rural East Texas and Detroit.