Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2014
Capstone Advisor
Professor Arthur Flowers
Honors Reader
Assoc. Dir. Sarah Harwell
Capstone Major
English
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
yes
Won Capstone Funding
yes
Honors Categories
Creative
Subject Categories
Creative Writing | Fiction
Abstract
180 Degrees Away is a novel that started as a capstone project for the honors department and further developed into a work that will later be submitted to literary agencies and publishing houses.
The novel tells the story of eighteen-year-old Ames Treadway, who has been nothing but a punching bag to his father for years. After walking in on a particularly horrifying event involving his father and younger sister, Layla, Ames nearly kills his father before taking his sister and running away. Layla, Ames, and three of Ames’ friends journey from their home in New Jersey to Nashville, where he believes his mother resides. With his sole desire of getting Layla somewhere safe before he is arrested for the crime he committed against his father, Ames is desperate. But after his mother rejects his plea for help, the group carries on north toward Philadelphia where his aunt – one last hope for a guardian to four-year-old Layla – lives.
Along with Ames on the road trip are his two best friends, Henry and Daisy, and Henry’s girlfriend, Reign. Through his travels, Ames grows close to the troubled Reign, meets a professor and a homeless man who both truly believe in him and a boy that reminds him of himself, learns how to be there for his sister in ways he couldn’t before, and discovers himself. The story is about familial love and romantic love, about friendship and betrayal, about desire and fear, about hate and compassion, and about freedom and what it is like to forfeit that freedom. It is about how Ames loses everything but finds himself in the rubble.
Recommended Citation
Daniels, Megan, "180 Degrees Away" (2014). Honors Capstone Projects - All. 735.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/735
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
