First published 1981
Billy Recco watches the grown-ups around him make terrible choices. The ten-year-old boy spends the summer of 1939 at a boardinghouse in rural New Jersey with his divorced mother and his bitter grandfather, a widower who seems angry at the world. Into this tense family circle comes Tom Thebus, a man who pursues women with little regard for the damage he causes. Billy observes as the adults entangle themselves in lies and desires they cannot control. His mother becomes drawn to Tom despite the obvious danger. His grandfather nurses old wounds and fresh resentments. The boardinghouse becomes a stage for betrayals both large and small. Billy must navigate this world where the people who should protect him are too consumed by their own needs to see his. The boy learns hard lessons about love, disappointment, and the ways adults fail each other and the children who depend on them.
Genres: fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, family-drama, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New Jersey
Period: 1939
224 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books