Stand by, Mackenzie

This story will be published in 12 installments in the newsletter in 2010, as well as on the blog:

Mackenzie Kern is a skinny 18 year-old with a Grade 12 education, a bookkeeper mother and a lay preacher father. At the end of her last year of high school her best and only friend Bethany moves to the city with her boyfriend, leaving Mackenzie all alone in her whistle stop hometown of Sheridan's Falls.

Bored, broke and completely unsure of where to take her life next, Mackenzie gets a call from the Technical Director of the summer stock theatre troupe that has moved into the Lion's Hall for the summer. He's heard that Mackenzie helped out with the community theatre's production of The Grapes of Wrath last winter - would she like to come and be a part of the crew for a professional show?

Thinking she's just been given a job offer Mackenzie readily accepts, but soon realizes that she's just a volunteer, and that these "professionals" aren't nearly as adept at putting on plays as she thought they'd be.

But on the day before she plans to go to the TD and tell him she's outta there something happens that will make this one summer that Mackenzie will never forget....