The Stopped Clock

The Consequences

The Stopped Clock covers the months following the series finale, tracing the consequences of every choice, every wound, and every departure that the first two books set in motion. It is the novel about what happens when the story you thought you were in turns out to be the prologue to a different story entirely.

In the Minnesota hospital, Ares and Canterbilly communicate through the wall by knocking. One knock means I am here. Two knocks means I am scared. Three knocks means tell me a joke. Canterbilly knocks three times. Ares tells a joke. It is not funny. Three more knocks. They are teacher and student, fellow patients, and two people who use humor to survive because the alternative is silence, and silence in a hospital is the sound of giving up.

Back in Westborough, Crew publishes "A Farewell to Shins" and discovers that the paper survived Ares' departure because Crew's editorial voice is not a scalpel like Ares' but a hammer, and the hammer is what the paper needs. Stan goes to real rehab at the Chrichton center, the kind without epiphanies, the kind where you have bad days and worse days and occasionally a day that is merely terrible. Doublewe, the administrator who spent two books crumpling the Krugerand and throwing it at his wastebasket, goes to Canterbilly's empty house, finds the grandfather clock stopped at eleven-thirty in the morning, and winds it. He winds it every day at lunch for seven months. That image is the moral center of the final book.

The Characters

Ares Taler returns from treatment to a Westborough that moved forward without him. His arc is the return, and the return is harder than the departure because the person who comes back is not the person who left, and the world he comes back to is not the world he left, and the only tool he has for bridging the gap is the one tool that has never failed him: language.

Crewly "Crew" Smith evolves from inheritor to partner. Crew ran the paper alone. He proved he could. Now he must figure out how to share it again with someone who has been changed by an experience Crew cannot fully understand.

Stan Harrison negotiates sobriety as a daily practice rather than a destination. The white rose he sends Julie is not a grand gesture but a small, repeated act of presence. His arc in Book Three is the most realistic because it is the most ordinary.

Jace Canterbilly returns from the hospital to a classroom that cannot contain what he and Ares now know about each other. He is less sardonic, more present. When Ares calls him "Mr. Canterbilly," he says: "You can call me Jace, Mr. Taler. You have earned it."

Puck Taler has refused treatment. He has chosen to live on his own terms. The trilogy does not kill Puck. It does not save him. It lets him be alive for as long as he is alive, and it treats every moment of his aliveness as sufficient. The chapter ends with Puck and Ares sitting on the back porch, not talking, watching the sun go down, and Puck reaching into his pocket and pulling out nothing because there is nothing in his pocket, and laughing at his own empty hand.

Doublewe steps forward as the novel's most surprising character. The administrator who fought the newspaper becomes the man who maintains the teacher's clock, who reads every issue Crew publishes, who crumples the paper and throws it at the wastebasket and, for the first time, makes the shot.

The Things That Don't Resolve

Not every wound heals. Keithe does not come back. Sandy's story ends somewhere the reader cannot follow. Mike does not get better; he gets worse. Milton Redson does not become a better father. Mrs. Bergman does not get an apology from the school. Albert does not stop abandoning planes. Mom does not stop keeping lists of appointments in her drawer. The novel is honest about the limits of narrative: some people leave your life at sixteen without explanation or resolution, and the grain of sand stays in the wound.

But the clock ticks. Somebody wound it. And the final image of the trilogy is the journalism room at Westborough, the Krugerand being printed, Canterbilly eating his donuts, Ares writing, and the grandfather clock running because someone chose to keep it running, and choosing is the only thing any of them can do.

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.