REECE WINNER FOR THE WIN
The Making of a Teen Humanitarian
by
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David Winner slipped in and out of consciousness according to the amount of pain wracking his body at the time. He was unaware that the warm, sticky wetness he was lying in was his own blood, oozing from the laceration the door had inflicted when he he’d leapt from the car. The pain bothered him less than the absence of feeling in his legs, one of which was twisted at an unnatural angle. He was certainly unable to move them and when the urgent desire to reach Reece forced him to try, the agony from his dislocated hip became unbearable and he blacked out.
When he next came to, he was surrounded by faces. One appeared to be shouting silently and grimacing as if angry with him. In his confused mental state, he believed he was under attack, the excruciating pain offering tangible support for his hysteria. He instinctively lashed out with his arm, unaware, that his attempt at self-defence amounted to not much more than a twitch, because his muscles were unable to respond.
After seconds, minutes or hours, he didn’t know which, the agony of having his wound put under pressure to stem the escape of his lifeblood, made him scream and with what he was sure was his dying breath, he mumbled the name ‘Reece’.
The cacophony of sounds assaulting his senses were deafening, but the voice of someone repeating ‘Reece is fine,’ penetrated the acoustic fog and seduced David Winner to accept, with renewed calm, the insidious creeping of death. His eyes closed to the rhythmic lullaby of helicopter rotors beating the air.
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About the Book
When twelve-year-old Reece Winner’s parents buy a pub overlooking the stunning coastline of North Cornwall, his life appears perfect and probably would be, if it wasn’t for the bullying he occasionally has to deal with. But things take an unexpected turn for the worse, when his parents split up and his father’s potential bankruptcy threatens to destroy everything he values. He is befriended by Kara, a classmate who is carrying her own emotional baggage, following her father’s suicide three years previously. She offers Reece consolation and support, while helping him to face the tragedies that conspire to overwhelm him. However, she becomes much more than a shoulder to cry on and inspires Reece to chase an ambition that most teenagers could only dream of.
About the Author
Kevin Armes is a former Health Service Clerical Officer, a Publican of over twenty years and a parent to a fifteen-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. He enjoyed, as a child, the adventures of Enid Blyton and since those early days has regularly visited Cornwall in the south-west of England, where so many of her books were set. Therefore, it was perhaps inevitable that he should set his début novel in this same location. After selling his last pub business in 2010, he decided to commit fully to writing and moved the family to the county that has inspired him, to live in the picturesque fishing village of Polperro.
Having travelled extensively, he has a keen interest in world affairs and this has infused him with a desire to draw the attention of young readers to the crises affecting children in some of the poorest and most deprived areas on the planet. His intention is to take his main character, Reece Winner, to one such location in each subsequent book.
He and his wife Juren have sponsored the education of three young relations in The Philippines and hope that his writing can enable them to achieve other humanitarian ambitions in the parts of the world depicted in future stories.