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WAIT FOR PRIVATE BLACK by James L. Summers Kirkus Star

WAIT FOR PRIVATE BLACK

By

Pub Date: Oct. 13th, 1958
Publisher: Westminster

David Black's transition from a teen-age Walter Mitty to a searching, but dedicated, adult makes up the core of this masterful conception of adolescence. A writer of unusual empathy and skill, James Summers' teen-age world is uniquely defined by his own understanding of the valor and impotence of youth. For these are not the rebels who struggle with fist and knife against anything as tangible as authority and law. They are the windmill fighters who stage their urgent encounters on the harrowing field of self, armed only with the questions, doubts, and hopes. Excellently paced, painfully revealing, David Black's struggle to understand his unconventional family, his haunting love for a girl who is at once disturbingly real and phantasmagoric, his emergence from a worshipful to a compassionate love for his older sister, is rich with courage and understanding.