<p><span style=color: rgba(51 51 51 1)>Raised in Kansas Pebbles at the Beach is a collection of sixty-five poems by the author Steven Thomas Dykes. Poetry the eldest sister of all arts and parent of most (Congreve). This was my introduction into becoming an artist-my first love. This novel dates back over a decade to when I was in my infancy of writing and it followed me on a search for meaning and purpose through my travels across the great highways of the United States of America to even crossing the pond to sit in the Pere La-Chaisse cemetery in Paris France next to Oscar Wilde's gravesite. These one hundred four poems aim to express the life I lived from the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-eight.</span></p>