Synopsis
After her father dies, fourteen-year-old Corin needs her brother, Sonny, more than ever. Sonny is quiet but he's a great listener, and Cory knows where she can always find him - in the garage, working on his car. Life isn't so bad as long as Sonny is around. But thousands of miles from the sleepy little town of Ojala, California, where all the kids can think about is partying and racing, a war is going on, and Sonny is just the right age to be drafted. When Sonny tells Cory he's going to Vietnam, she is devastated. What are she and her mom supposed to do while he's gone? What if he doesn't come back at all? The new substitute history teacher is the only one who seems to understand. Cory has never met anybody like Lawrence. He's young, he's handsome, and he's passionately against the war that took her brother away. As Cory turns to Lawrence for the comfort Sonny once gave, she finds herself wanting much more than Lawrence could ever provide.
Valerie Hobbs eloquently depicts the feelings of loss, betrayal, and love felt by a young woman amid the confusion and excitement of the 1960s.
Claire Rosser; KLIATT - KLIATT
Hobbs gives readers a strong narrative from the year 1968, a terrible year for Cory's family and for America. This is the year of the Tet Offensive, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Cory's father died that year, and her older brother Sonny decides to go to fight in Vietnam, even though he could be excused from the draft because of his father's death. So Cory and her mother are left to cope with their grief and fear in the small California town where they are trying to make a go of a small restaurant. Cory is in the 9th grade and soon gets a crush on her new history teacher, a radical graduate student who gets the class asking questions about the war. Cory joins the small peace movement at the high school, even as she gets letters from Sonny, fighting in Vietnam. Aspects of Cory's town are just like the town portrayed in the early George Lucas film American Graffiti, about teenagers seeking thrills riding around in their souped-up cars and daring one another to race. Sonny comes home from the war completely changed in ways that Cory cannot understand. The town's obsession over racing cars becomes an important way for Hobbs to illustrate just how much Sonny has been damaged by the war. This is a powerful story about the effects of a war on society, told in small details of everyday life by an intelligent young teenager, the narrator Cory. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JS* Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2002, Farrar, Straus, 215p.,