Beneath the Harvest Sky

Seventeen year olds Casper and Dominic are best friends who grew up together in the US-Canada border town of Van Buren, Maine, where they still live. Irresponsible Casper is belligerent toward authority, he having grown up in a broken home with his mother, Kim, who he doesn't much like, and a houseful of younger half-siblings. He gets along better with his drug dealer father, Clayton, perhaps more out of the economics of the situation, where he sometimes provides his father with prescription drugs for sale, largely stolen from family, friends and acquaintances. Casper is close to being expelled from school. He has also gotten his fifteen year old casual girlfriend Tasha pregnant, she who is pressuring him to step up to the plate and take full responsibility for them. Conversely, Dominic is the model of responsibility, he a good student who the school's guidance counselors expect will go into post-secondary studies. He is a hard worker according to George, on whose farm he has worked for the past two years doing grueling manual labor. People who know Casper and Dominic don't understand why they're friends. For Dominic, it's because when he's with Casper he knows something will always happen as opposed to the boring nothing that generally is the norm in Van Buren. For Casper, it's because Dominic is the only person who truly believes in him. What most know except many that would benefit from such information is that Dominic's sole purpose for working is to earn enough money to buy a car so that he and Casper can move to Boston, just so that they can escape their respective lives and thus problems in Van Buren. Beyond going to see the Red Sox, Dominic has not thought out what his or their life will be in Boston. This vague plan may be affected by what happens in their lives just before Dominic is able to buy the car. For Dominic, he and his most recent girlfriend Emma are trying to figure out the status of their relationship as they will probably diverge following graduation. And for Casper, he is getting sucked into his father's illegal business - most specifically in aspects regarding the smuggling of drugs across the border - without knowing that there are bigger factors in play in what is going on.