When was the last time you saw a teenage boy with a book in his hand? A phone, alas, probably all the time. But a book? Unless a teacher stuck it there, you’re as likely to find a boy holding an abacus as reading a book.
But one man in North Carolina is out to change that. Andrew M. Dare (a pseudonym, because he disdains celebrity, and because he doesn’t actually exist, being in fact the creation of Tony Daniel and David Afsharirad) is an adventurer who has climbed mountains in Nepal, surfed and sailed around the world, and challenged his body in Ironman competitions. Now he has set himself what he considers the biggest, or most important, challenge of them all: making America literate again, starting with American boys. They’ve been badly served, he says, by a popular culture that teaches that “the future is female,” that perversity is our strength, and that belittles, ignores, or condemns young men as toxic brutes.
He wants to renew popular culture by directly renewing its seedbed, literature, with stories that will inspire young men to prepare their minds, souls, talents, and imaginations to dream big and achieve big. That’s why he has written a new series of novels for teenage boys who crave adventure and knowledge, learning technical skills and unraveling historical mysteries. Call them Hardy Boys for the Twenty-First Century. He calls them American Treasure Hunters, and the first adventure—featuring his teenage boy heroes Ben Prescott, Porter Rockwell, and Latch McRae—is called The Hunt for Confederate Gold, just published by Ark Press, an imprint of Passage Press.
I imagined I met Andrew Dare in his log cabin not far inland from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. At his feet was his dog Gulliver. In his hands was a steaming cup of coffee. He told me he had been writing all night. Handsome and tan, with close-cropped grey hair and beard, I noted the obvious scars on his large fists and muscular forearms. I asked if there was a story behind those scars. “Sure,” he said, “life.”
CROCKER: So, after a life like yours, why write books, especially when no one seems to be reading?
DARE: People aren’t reading because there’s nothing—or hardly anything—worth reading. The slop on the Internet isn’t worth reading. Your local library is likely a smelly ruin. And your local bookstore would rather sell you coffee than a book. Books made a big difference in my life. I would never have gone to Nepal or Australia or Hawaii or sailed or done half the things I’ve done, if I hadn’t been a voracious reader. Some people join the Army or the Navy to see the world. I did it through books—at least at first; that was the introduction. I think kids need that today too—not just to learn about other places, but to learn about their own country and its history. I meet too many kids today—good, well-meaning kids—who don’t know jack, whose curiosity seems stunted, and who frankly need a kick in the pants to get out there and do something with their lives.
CROCKER: You think a book will change that?
DARE: Absolutely. Nothing else can. We’re at grave risk, in my opinion, of becoming a post-literate society, and that means a society that can’t think clearly, that lacks understanding, that shorts itself on perception, compassion, and wisdom.
CROCKER: Tall order to turn that around.
DARE: Not if you make it attractive. I grew up on adventure stories. I relished reading Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis L’Amour. In my experience, every teenage boy yearns to learn about history, adventure, courage, challenge, duty, mastering new skills, what it means to be a man. One of my hobbies is flying kites. I think about reading adventure stories in much the same way. Reading is a skill, like kite-flying is a skill, both of which take patience and focus. If you use that skill, that patience, that focus, you can set your kite, or your imagination, soaring. The problem is boys are no longer encouraged to train their minds and imaginations with books. Instead, they’re kept distracted or sedated with electronics; they’re largely enslaved to electronics. Sports and electronics are all boys need—that seems to be the attitude. Sports are great. Electronics have their place. But boys—young men—need a lot more than that; they’re capable of a lot more than that.
CROCKER: The Hunt for Confederate Gold has a rebel battle flag on the cover. It opens with a fireworks fight between two groups of boys, and then the discovery of the remnants of a Confederate blockade-runner on a spit of sand uncovered by low tide. The lords of political correctness won’t like that.
DARE: I don’t want them to like it. Political correctness is a self-imposed lobotomy, a zombification that’s rampant among kids in their twenties. They just regurgitate whatever nonsense seems fashionable, that puffs up their own vanity; or they get lost in the sewer of social media. I want to save young boys from that; I want to prevent their zombification; I want them immune from Internet rabbit hole insanity. I want them to understand and appreciate history, its romance, its drama, and its heroes, and what defines a hero: courage, reverence, and patriotic gratitude. I want to influence kids before they go to college.
CROCKER: And good, old-fashioned adventure stories are the way to do that?
DARE: I think so. You can call them old-fashioned if you want to, but these kids, my books’ heroes, are modern kids: they’ve got cellphones, they speak today’s lingo, but, sure, they’re representative of today’s best kids. They respect old-fashioned values; they don’t drink or smoke; they’re practical: they work with their hands and their brains. And with youth and ambition, there’s always hope.
CROCKER: How many books are in the series?
DARE: That depends on how well it does; and we’re not cutting corners on these books. The aesthetics are important; and I made sure, working with the publisher, that we have nicely jacketed hardcovers, sturdy enough to take on a camping trip, printed on durable, high-quality paper. The Hunt for Confederate Gold is out now, and I’ve got a half-dozen sequels in various states of progress. The next one will be The Boston Tea Party Conspiracy. Then I’ve got The Pirate and the Alamo, The Missing U-Boat Enigma, The Secret of the Silver Cavern, and one that I know will appeal to you, since you’ve written about him, The Mummy of Ambrose Bierce.
CROCKER: Yeah, I’ll take that one, and The Hunt for Confederate Gold.
DARE: You’ll like it. Once you gain a taste for history and adventure—like you and I have—you never lose it. We just need to get our young men started; their natural male instincts to learn and excel will do the rest.
H.W. Crocker III is a popular historian and novelist, and a former political speechwriter and publishing executive. His most recent book is a World War II thriller, Kruger’s Korps.
