SELLING PENCILS, AND CHARLIE

In Perry’s debut novel, a young woman discovers that her beloved books haven’t prepared her for real life.

In 1963, Pamela Carey is following her late mother Alice’s dream of self-sufficiency. The young woman is an English major at UCLA who hopes to become a professor. Her boyfriend, Warren, is a superior student and a subpar third baseman who acts as her stabilizing influence. However, she finds herself pursuing the boy who got away—Charlie Fain, on whom she’s had a crush since Catholic school. Charlie’s now the star of their school’s baseball team and Warren's teammate. Pamela must also watch over her father, Mickey, a punch-drunk former boxer who’s also a womanizing alcoholic. Pamela and Charlie flirt with each other, which leads to Charlie’s mother’s catching them in his room, semiclothed. Charlie soon invites Pamela to his first game in Single-A pro baseball. They later marry, and Pamela must learn how to find fulfillment as a ballplayer’s wife. This becomes harder after Charlie is injured and his career stalls. In Pamela, Perry has created a character who, in part, follows the expectations of her time; women in the early 1960s were often seen, especially by men, as nurturers, first and foremost. The author depicts Pamela as going a step further, becoming an enabler to both Mickey and Charlie—and her own, separate ambitions suffer as a result. The protagonist seems to learn little from Alice’s lectures or the cautionary tales of Jane Austen and the Brontës, as she ends up having to choose between milquetoast Warren and roguish Charlie when neither one will suffice. It isn’t until the author has Pamela abandon her dependence on unreliable men and make hard choices that the character gets back on track. As a result, this is a beguiling volume—one that offers readers a journey that’s painful but ultimately educational.

An engaging novel featuring a winning character who struggles to find her path.