A sudden friendship with an older woman gets a small-town football hero through a tough transition in this introspective story from Shoup (Wish You Were Here, 1994). Fully equipped with a loyal buddy, a passionate cheerleader girlfriend, a stable home, an offer of a football scholarship, and a prosperous used-car business to inherit from his father, Lucas looks beyond his senior year and feels the town of Harmony, Indiana, closing in on him. His performance on and off the field slides, and he demonstrates a new talent for rubbing everyone the wrong way. Lucas finds a needed confidante in Allie Bowen, a new resident who shares his taste for '60s music. Offering both a sympathetic ear and hard-earned wisdom as (she eventually confesses) a Vietnam Warera terrorist who did time for murder, she helps him weather a series of crises, from the realization that he no longer wants to play football to his blackly humorous panic attack following a night of unprotected sex. Unlike Rich Wallace's Wrestling Sturbridge (1996), the sports action is downplayed; Lucas focuses less on external events than on his own anger and turmoil, so dramatic tension builds largely on the emotional plane—unusual in a teen novel with a male protagonist. Lucas manages to loosen the ties that bind him to Harmony, and is last seen not in rebellion, but comfortably contemplating his many options—a true '90s ending. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: June 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7868-0287-1
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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