A FORTUNE IN DIMES

by Mary Arkley Carter ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This time tomorrow, you won't be what you were yesterday. And you'll never be that Decker again. Mark the day, Decker. Then it won't slip by you. When you look back, at least you'll know when it was...And let me tell you something, brother mine. You won't like Decker Wells any more than I like Nini Wells Butler, but you'll be stuck with him."" We first meet Decker Wells, scion of a Have society in full bloom in the Pasadena sun, as he freeways to Balboa Beach with his two pals Alex and Miller for a last vacation blast as highschool seniors. With dreams of Tahiti dancing in their heads, they pick up a sailor and settle for Tijuana instead. Then Decker is off to U.C.L.A and his father's frat; Aleg comes too, but shares his room with a football-playing pre-med Negro student and aims at medicine himself; Miller stays home to battle his alcoholic mother for her life. Many worlds appear to Decker, but he remains unaware of his attitude toward them or indeed of existence. Sensible, as the guy with good instincts, the social animal-group man, formed by his desire to get along with others, Decker cannot realise these worlds -- or himself -- until a shocking defection drives his first girl from him, loses Miller to the spiritual life, and ultimately shames him into a sense of separateness with which he cannot but must live. Mary Arkley Carter hovers over her protagonist with a bright loving humor that turns acute as she must reveal his true nature. Deft, mature, with a capacity for pyrotechnics, the steel to probe the truth and the heart to make it endurable, this is the work of a real writer. Send up a flare!

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown-A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: FICTION