River Season
Jim Black
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Penguin Books
ISBN: 0142004448

A young boy's journey through an unforgettable summer of friendship, love, & loss in a small Texas town in 1966.

Thirteen-year-old Jim is looking forward to the baseball & tomfoolery of summer with his best friends Charles & Gary - & most of all, spending hours in solitude at his favorite fishing hole along the Little Wichita River. Except this year he finds his private place invaded by Sam, an old African American from the other side of town.

River Season is a series of gently told stories about the escapades boys will get into, rockets & boat rides, mowing lawns & meetings at the local hamburger joint & barber shop, & ball games. About the strays & waifs to be found in any small town, hilarious & scary stories of things that go bump in the night, the petty meanness that fear & prejudices stir, the memories of legends & the adventures of boyhood.

Most of all River Season is about the summer that changed Jim Black's life forever: when he watched the stars fall to earth, learnt about compassion & friendship, & met the prettiest girl in the world. When he played pranks, got caught up by the river's current, & met the wisest man in his life.

This is a wonder-filled, redemptive novel of “misfits”: a boy who misses his father, who has made friends with two other boys also without their fathers. It seesaws between mischief & mayhem, real scary adventures & inventive capers & the blossoming of love in all its different guises: of an old man & his stories, of a wounded old dog, of boys who stand by each other, of the night of the soul, of a girl, of the game of baseball, & of the constant river.

River Season is the quintessential American small town boys' experience told with charm, humor & magic.

Thought-provoking, lyrical & satisfying.
(01/30/05)

Rebecca