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A Delightful Coming of Age Story
It's the summer of 1968 in rural Pennsylvania. Young Jack Elliot's cousin from Philadelphia, who he's never met, comes to visit the Ellitot's after his policeman father is targeted by criminal in riot-torn Philly.
Jack lives with his two older brothers, mother and father in the only home he's ever known and his cousin Frankie has never been outside the city. They are the city mouse and country mouse re-told. Jack has one goal this summer; to figure out a way to keep his soon-to-be draft eligible oldest brother Pete from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. But the summer turns into so much more than what Jack had planned, and Frankie plays a large part.
It's the summer of love, the clashing of political ideologies within a family, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, racial riots and all the changes that took place within our country and within Jack's family.
Author Bill River has a descriptive way with words that makes you feel, hear, see, taste and smell the life of rural Pennsylvania, as well as reminding you of what your own life (if you were a young man in 1968) was like in relation to events around our country.
This is a delightfully told coming of age story of two boys and the last summer they, really, will be boys. After this, things will never be the same and both find themselves growing up in ways they never imagined.
