Author: Howard Owen
Publisher: Permanent Press
Release Date: December 1, 2010
Hardcover, 184 pages
ISBN 10: 1579622070
ISBN 13: 9781579622077
The Book Depository / Amazon
Goodreads description:
George James and Freeman Hawk were unlikely friends. George was part of soft-spoken, old-money Richmond; Freeman came from a hardscrabble country family mired in poverty and marked by violence. Fate threw them together long ago as freshman roommates at New Hope College. It was the late '60s, and George was the standard-bearer for a society living on borrowed time while Freeman was leading the charge into what came next. Before they left New Hope, though, Freeman would convert George, convince him that there was a better world to be made, persuade him-temporarily-to forsake the seamless life that already was mapped out for him as the Ham Prince of Richmond. Canada. The option to war- bloodied America, beckoned. The moment of truth came in a small town on the Vermont border, where George James lost his faith in Freeman Hawk-or perhaps in himself-and hesitated. Fast-forward to the early twenty-first century, in a world whose axis has been tilted by 9/11. George and his son Jake, are existing in a shaky approximation of normalcy, nursing the wounds of their own, personal loss as George negotiates the sale of the family business and Jake, plunged into despair and rage by his mother's death, is consigned to a private school for "troubled" teens. Things get dicier when Freeman Hawk reappears. Nothing about him is as it seems, not even his name. Freeman is on the run, but from what? In Howard Owen's ninth novel, old scabs are torn off and new wounds inflicted. In the end there will be a reckoning for all of them, and sixteen-year-old Jake James will find himself at a border as daunting as the one from which his father turned back so long ago.
My Take:
This is another instance of not judging a book by its cover. Inside of this rather plain cover is a story of family ties, friendship, and coming-of-age. Throw in a thriller aspect near the end, and you have a book that encompasses so many aspects of life.
We read of George's college experience during the Vietnam War, his wealthy family ties, his friendship with his former dorm-mate Freeman Hawk (a protestor and rabble rouser), and the ways his loyalty is pulled and tested.
From an incredibly sad first chapter, we experience Jake's loss and grief from the death of his mother to the accidental death of her dog. There is a chasm that opens up between Jake and George once Carter (Jake's mother) dies, and Jake predictably begins to act out in school, resulting in his being expelled from the magnet school he's attending and placed in an alternative school. His new girlfriend Andrea has an ex-boyfriend who threatens and bullies Jake.
Freeman has his own back story, coming from a poor family where a great tragedy made him fatherless at nine years old. He ends up as a draft dodger living in Canada (George, with his family ties, ends up serving in the reserves instead of going to war). When he asks George all these many years later if he can stay with them for a while, George agrees, causing the family to end up caught in a net of danger that he unknowingly brings with him.
Owens is a gifted writer, drawing the reader into these varied lives and making you care, really care, about what happens to George and Jake. I didn't really care for Freeman, although I did admire him for overcoming his family tragedy and making it to college, where he marched to the beat of his own drum.
For me, reading this book raised the question: "How far should the ties of friendship stretch?"
QUOTES
He drifted toward other kids, the ones who somehow communicated to each other that they had been wronged beyond all compensation, and had a right to stand to one side and despise the world that had shorted them in some fashion. He had earned his membership with his leap from the bridge.
George did not dislike Tim Fairweather. He found him to be funny, self-deprecating and decent. In the time he'd spent around Freeman's friends, Hawk's Doves, he'd come to respect him. He knew he'd never have the courage to be so openly, unabashedly different. It would have been easier, George knew, to be Freeman Hawk than to be Tim Fairweather.
He had hoped that he might graduate from New Hope without ever having the cultural and moral conflict that was now facing him.
One day the year before, as she was standing in the hallway talking with a couple of friends, a senior on the basketball team came up from behind and pressed himself against Andrea.
"Do you like that?" he'd asked, humping forward as two other boys watched, grinning.
Andrea looked thoughtful for a second or two and said, "Hmm. Just like a penis. Only smaller. I'm going to call you Peewee."
Writing: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Characters: 4 out of 5 stars
Reading Immersion: 3.5 out 5 starsBOOK RATING: 3.75 out of 5 stars
Sensitive Reader: Strong language, some sex and violence
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| One of my listed titles for the 2012 150+ Reading Challenge |
Disclosure: I received a complimentary galley of this title from Library Thing's Early Reviewers Program to facilitate my review. No other compensation was received and I was not required to post a positive review.
