THE SUMMER SHERMAN LOVED ME

Set in a time when women stayed home and wore nylons even in the summer, this slice-of-life is less of a story and more of an evocative mood piece. Author St. Anthony beautifully captures the texture of the time—the unused plastic covered couch, laundry on the backyard clothesline, pin curls and Kool-Aid—and gets Margaret’s brooding confusion as well. Told in simple straightforward prose, the first-person narrative skillfully captures the near magical mindset of childhood, when the link between action and consequence is hazy and fantasy and reality bleed into each other at the edges. Although chock-full of incident, the story doesn’t have much of an overarching plot, but the catalyst for the action is a declaration of love by Sherman, Margaret’s handsome and unpredictable neighbor. This jolts her into adolescence and sets the stage for her conflict and eventual nascent understanding of her seemingly disapproving mother. Sadly, this story doesn’t pack much of an emotional wallop, leaving the reader interested but fundamentally unengaged. (Fiction. 9-12)