Pride

During the Depression, a 10-year-old boy befriends a carnival stuntman and his lion cub and learns about the meaning of family, loyalty, love, and survival.

Powerful and evocative, William Wharton's fifth novel magically recreates a pre-World War II world - a finely etched portrait of a working-class family: a carnival stuntman and his lion ... and, most of all, love. Dickie Kettleson's father is passing along to his ten-year-old son a joyful, wholehearted pride in work - whether it is the daily work one is paid to do or the design and construction of the greatest sand castle ever seen on the Jersey shore. Nevertheless, Dickie lives in constant fear of hunger and the destruction of his family. When the boy meets Sture Modig, a carnie crippled in World War I, now trying to make a living with a lion cub he's rescued, their worlds suddenly collide. For them, on an October day in 1938 in Wildwood, New Jersey, the meanings of family, loyalty, love, and survival will all be redefined and their lives irrevocably changed. The result is a deeply affecting story ... a profound lesson in trust and pride.

Library Journal

Following the disappointing hodgepodge of Scumbler ( LJ 5/1/84), the author of magical Birdy ( LJ 12/15/78) and well-received Dad (5/15/81) is back on track with Pride. Eleven-year-old Dickie Kettleson's family is surviving the Great Depression, with his father returning to work amid labor unrest at corporation ``M.E.'' The times, late 1930s, and the places, urban row houses and parochial school, are remembered in fine detail. Interspersed with the story of the family's growing concern over threats because of Dad's union work is the tale of Sture Modig, strange Swedish farmchild from Wisconsin, now in charge of a lion act. The two stories will meet on the beaches of New Jersey in a hurried but generally satisfying conclusion. Recommended for most fiction collections. Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.

William Wharton was born in Philadelphia in 1925. He volunteered for the United States Army and served in France and Germany during World War II. Later in life Wharton returned to France and lived on a houseboat on the Seine. Wharton's first novel, Birdy, won the National Book Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Before his death in 2008 at the age of eighty-two, Wharton published eight novels and three memoirs in the United States.