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We are only rewarded with a few life long intense friendships.

This book tells about such a bond between two teen age boys with problem families. They find each other and cleave together in a way that inspires and confirms the rarest of life's treasures.

Brewster by Mark Slouka (2013)

Brewster is the lower middle class town they live in.

Jon, the serious one, lives in a family barely saved as refugees from WWII, Jews who just made it, only to have tragedy strike the family when the older son is accidentally killed. Ray is a bad boy abused by an ex-cop father who has devised the strategy of being a fighter to hide his Dad's ravaging blows.

They meet, they fuse, they live out their time together as a refuge from lives they never asked for nor deserved. Homes shaken to the core and still not recovering. Forever dysfunctional. A term inadequate to describe their situations.

But they do not meet because of that. They meet because of a spark, an ignition of what comes to be love. Affection between two teenage boys that is not only a shelter from the storm but way more than that. A gift for as long as both may live.

The both end up with girls and other close male friends that they share. The serious boy becomes a runner. He is good at it. The other applauds. Supports. Defends when need be.

The parents who cannot love their own surviving son find in the close friend, the troubled bad boy, a boy they can take on emotionally. They become a part of the healing that occurs.

This is a brave book requiring a brave reader. What happens is hard and relentless. In a way it is a thriller. Whether the races that are run or the fights that must be endured. The beatings. The shame. There is fun, funniness, great joy of life. Hanging out is an art for these two who learn, together, to work on a car and get it running. To talk into the night. To share music and reading and school. To tell one another the facts of life, sex, love, even the lust for compatible women. Young women for the most part but one experience with an experienced lady becomes a template for happy, open female relationships.

It is the sixties and Viet Nam lies just over the horizon. Also Woodstock which occurs just up the road from Brewster, NY, the title town. They don't even think about attending.

I loved it. A 5 out of 5 on the scale.

So good, I immediately ordered Slouka's other novel.

Labels: books