A Farewell to Shins

The Episodes Made Flesh

A Farewell to Shins takes the eight episodes of the original 1982 television series and expands them from compressed dramatic architecture into full novelistic interiority. Where the scripts could only show what characters said and did, the novel goes inside their heads. When Stan drinks cherry vodka in the darkroom, you are inside Stan's body, feeling what the alcohol does to a nervous system that has come to need it. When Bergie brings the gun to school, you have already spent an entire book watching the accumulation of abuse that produced the decision, and the gun is not a surprise. It is an inevitability that the adults in the building should have seen coming and did not.

The chapter structure does not map one-to-one onto episodes. Instead, the novel redistributes the material according to the logic of prose rather than the logic of television. The grain-of-sand metaphor from Episode One is tested by every subsequent event: Bergie's gun, Stan's pills, Mike's cocaine, Keithe's dismissal of Sandy's pregnancy, Canterbilly's departure, Bryant's cruelty, Tiffany Brass's predatory attention, and finally, the revelation of Ares' own bone cancer.

The Characters

Ares Taler moves from truth-teller to secret-keeper to revealed patient. The arc inverts his role: the boy who sees everything and names it is hiding the one thing that could destroy him. His departure for Minnesota is both a retreat from the group and an act of trust, leaving Crew the brown envelope containing the last column.

Crewly "Crew" Smith evolves from comic sidekick to inheritor. His arc is the growing recognition that he is being prepared to carry something Ares cannot carry anymore: the Krugerand, the friendship, the column.

Andy Harper arrives from Wisconsin with cheese allergies, pine tree allergies, and a quiet steadiness that changes everything. His intervention with the gun and his stakeout of Ares' house are the actions of someone who has decided this is where he belongs.

Stan Harrison descends from the darkroom to rock bottom to fragile sobriety. The forced intoxication, the rehab lawn, and then the downtown walk with Julie, sober and noticing things he missed before. The red and white roses.

Julie Taler navigates multiple male needs while maintaining her own center. She is the one who gives Ares the white rose that ends up in Canterbilly's hospital room.

Bergie Bergman transforms from victim to armed attacker to returning figure who insists on being called Daniel. His insistence on the new name is the thematic statement: he has renamed himself.

Jace Canterbilly departs from Westborough and reappears as Ares' hospital roommate in Minnesota. The mentor who left becomes the fellow patient who needs saving. The revelation that Ares' roommate is Canterbilly is the novel's most structurally ambitious move.

About the Series

The Westborough Crusaders is a Young Adult trilogy rooted in the eight-episode television series David Boles wrote in 1982, at sixteen. Two episodes were produced for Cablevision, shot on location in Lincoln, Nebraska, and won a Cable ACE Award. The trilogy expands that material into a Before, During, and After structure: The Year Before the Wire traces the year before the series begins; A Farewell to Shins novelizes the eight episodes with full interior life; and The Stopped Clock follows the characters beyond the series finale into the territory of consequence and recovery.

Visit the series landing page for the complete episode archive, video episodes, and author interview.

About the Author

David Boles wrote the original Westborough Crusaders television scripts at sixteen, produced two episodes for Cablevision that won a Cable ACE Award, and spent over four decades with these characters before giving them the novels they demanded. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. He has studied medicine and law, not because he wanted to practice either, but because understanding how bodies break and how systems argue seemed prerequisite to writing about human beings with any seriousness.

He is the author of the Fractional Fiction series, the EleMenTs trilogy, Beautiful Numbness, Passage Land, and Touching Everything, Holding Nothing. He hosts the Human Meme podcast, publishes literary journalism at PrairieVoice.com, and maintains a web constellation that has been active since 1995.

He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Authors Guild, and PEN America. He lives in New York City.