The BAGO Boy

YOUNG URBAN PIRATE

A NOVEL NOVEL
BY
JOHN J. BRADLEY

The curious, smart, resourceful ten-year-old BAGO boy has doubts and many questions about religious dogma at his school. He is punished by nuns and abused by priests for asking unanswerable questions. To escape from their clutches, he becomes an urban pirate, embarks on a Huckleberry Finn river adventure with extraordinarily surprising results.

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The BAGO Boy

YOUNG URBAN PIRATE

A NOVEL NOVEL
BY
JOHN BRADLEY

The curious, smart, resourceful ten-year-old BAGO boy has doubts and many questions about religious dogma at his school. He is punished by nuns and abused by priests for asking unanswerable questions. To escape from their clutches, he becomes an urban pirate, embarks on a Huckleberry Finn river adventure with extraordinarily surprising results.

Excerpt
Amazon
Read a Sample
Listen to Sample
Excerpt
Amazon
Read a Sample
Listen to Sample
Amazon
Listen to Sample
Read a Sample
Excerpt

MEET THE CHARACTERS

" Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good "

John
Bradley

INSPIRING NOVELIST AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

John Bradley, Author, Filmmaker: I am The BAGO Boy and lived this story. All the characters and events in this novel are based on real persons and actual events. Although this is my first novel, I’ve been writing since I began keeping a journal at seven years old...

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... My articles appeared in TV Radio Mirror, Off Campus and on my non-profit advocacy, established in 2002, Justice On Trial. John Bradley Entertainment produced more than one hundred national broadcasts of Supercross on NBC, CBS, ESPN, in Japan, South Africa and Britain. My company produced some of the first freestyle motocross/Supercross films, Rick Johnson, Profile of a Champion, Ward’s Winning Ways, 1000 Mile Jump, Sick Air, WhatUP!” and many others. I will be completing a new novel, Super Double-Cross - SX 2 , in early 2024.

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Lived two houses down from Joey Ferrari and they were each other’s best friend. Bernie was a science buff, nurtured black widow spiders and snakes in his basement, mostly in glass milk bottles. He went to the same school, about a mile away from the Horseshoe neighborhood. Tall for his age, nine, he towered over all but the local teenagers. He and Joey were inseparable.

He was about a year younger than Brad and Em, the same age as Bernie, nine-years-old. Joe was an inch or so shorter than Brad, about the same height as Em, and went to school at another, much larger, Catholic school that was about a mile away from the Horseshoe neighborhood. He lived across the street from Abe’s Market and was one of the first neighborhood boys Brad met. Joe, as some called him, was with Brad on most of the trips taken on Turtle Pond

She was a rat terrier that my mother got me for my 5th birthday, so she was about 5 years old when she accompanied us on our adventure.  Katie was with me whenever conditions permitted, which is to say, when I rode my bike, she couldn’t go, otherwise, including in bed, she did. She was more tan than white, but both colors and weighted around ten or twelve pounds.

She disliked having two first names, Mary Margaret, or either of them separately, so she her nickname was “Em.” Em came from an affluent family who lived in the Upper Darby suburb of Philadelphia before moving to the Horseshoe. Her mother was active in many service organizations, donating her time. Her father was the captain of a Navy destroyer, based at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which is why the family moved to a historic home on the fringe of Brad’s Horseshoe neighborhood, so he would be closer to his ship. She was about the same age as Brad, and dazzled him with her self-confidence, smarts, and looks when they first met shortly after Brad moved into the neighborhood. Em proved her worth has a pirate, not a girlfriend.

His nickname is “Brad,” but his sister, a few other relatives and Em, his friend who was a girl pirate, called him “Johnny.” Born in Philadelphia, he was living in a rural area of the city until the family moved to a more urban neighborhood, which he dubbed the “Horseshoe.” All of Brad’s gang lived there and most other characters in the book. Although Brad knew early on, he was destined to be a pirate, it was his getting his camera that prompted the idea of making a pirate movie. It wasn’t until he got a pirate ship, that he planned to make a movie about a trip to the island he discovered on a tugboat tour.