Electric Dreams is a rousing good read of a true story, a tale of friendship and community, of daunting odds and a mad quest, of dedicated teachers and determined kids, of starting with almost nothing and ending up travelling far beyond all your expectations. Set in a rural, economically struggling region of North Carolina, Electric Dreams follows the long-shot bid of a team of high-school students going up against some of the top science-and-tech schools on the East coast in a competition to build the best electric car.

I call Skin Game my “coming-of-age story with an edge.” It was the last book I ever imagined writing, so of course it ended up being the first book I wrote. Everything about this book has turned out to be something of a surprise for me, in fact. I wrote about a very personal and particular experience, and although I still haven’t quite figured out how to introduce the book into casual conversation, it truly has astonished me how many different kinds of readers have told me that the themes I explored resonated with their own experiences.