KING OF THE MILD FRONTIER

Telling the story of growing up in a tiny Idaho town, Crutcher relates how “an unusual path leads from my life as a coonskin-cap-wearing, pimply-faced, 123-pound offensive lineman with a string of spectacularly dismal attempts at romance, to a storyteller of modest acclaim.” His father was a bomber pilot who had settled into a small-town life of running a wholesale oil and gas business, his mother a ghostly, drinking, chain-smoking presence who died of emphysema. Early scenes read like Gary Paulsen’s Harris and Me (1993) or Jack Gantos’s Jack Henry tales. Now a child-abuse therapist, Crutcher is clear that his awareness of social cruelty began with the adolescent cruelty of high-school life. What might have been just a volume of funny or unsettling anecdotes becomes a candid take on lessons learned, with a clear adult perspective. This is a good read and a deeply moral and philosophical work with important messages about life, death, relativity, heroism, and why bad things sometimes happen to good people. Like Gantos’s Hole in My Life (2002), it tells a strong story to get at strong truths. Essential for the many fans of Crutcher’s work, and new readers will go from here to his fiction. (Nonfiction. YA)