The Trouble With Cole McCaslin

Standing up to a bully takes courage. Understanding him may take even more.

Blake Granger's troubles begin when he asks Kayce Muldrew to the school picnic-and Cole McCaslin decides he does not like it.

Cole is bigger, stronger, and accustomed to getting his way through threats and intimidation. Blake knows he cannot defeat him in a fight, but backing down would mean allowing Cole to control him through fear. With Mickey, Chip, and Skeeter standing firmly behind him, Blake must find the courage to confront Cole without becoming a bully himself.

As the conflict follows Blake from the playground to the classroom and finally to the school picnic, he begins to glimpse another side of Cole-one shaped by loneliness, anger, and troubles that other people never see. Understanding those troubles does not excuse Cole's behavior, however. If Cole wants a second chance, he must accept responsibility and learn that friendship cannot be built through fear.

Meanwhile, the Brotherhood discovers that someone deliberately crossed a boy's face out of an old Mercyville School photograph. The boy was Dexter Hollis, a troubled student expelled twenty years earlier for destroying the school's prized gramophone. The official story seems simple, but the evidence does not. Why was Dex never allowed to tell his side? Why did his family suddenly leave Mercyville? And what connects him to an anonymous gift that has benefited the town's children for years?

With assistance from the observant Hickory Girls and Sheriff McClain's familiar homespun wisdom, the Brotherhood follows the mystery from Mercyville to Carthage, Texas. What they uncover may finally correct an old injustice-but only if the people involved are willing to face the truth.

Set in a small Texas town during the 1950s, The Trouble With Cole McCaslin: An Unexpected Friend is the third book in The Brotherhood of Four series. It is a warmhearted story of bullying, courage, accountability, forgiveness, and four boys learning that doing what is right sometimes means standing your ground-and sometimes means extending your hand.