Fire in the Rock (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Joe Martin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0345456912 | ISBN-13: 978-0345456915 | Publication Date: March 4, 2003

In the summer of ’56, in a small southern town, sixteen-year-old Bo Fisher thought he had it made. With an easy job, the use of a truck, and plenty of free time to spend with lovely, long-legged Mae Maude and contagiously energetic Pollo, the season seemed to stretch before him like a dream. For a preacher’s son, it was a startling whiff of independence: a rare opportunity to hang around people his parents didn’t pick out for him. And though he had to mind the rules of propriety, Bo didn’t think twice about befriending Pollo, who just so happened to be black. Of course, not everyone was so open-minded. After a terrible incident cuts short the youthful carelessness of the summer, Bo assumed he would never see Pollo or Mae Maude again. But ten years later, trouble brings the two men together once more—older, wiser, changed. And in order to save the future for one of them, the haunting events of that time long ago must be unearthed.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-At its heart, Martin's first novel is about coming-of-age, racism, and the definitions of friendship. In the South in the 1950s and '60s, three teens spend what appears to be an idyllic summer swimming, riding around in a borrowed pick-up truck, and preparing a church camp in a woodsy setting. Bo and Mae Maude, who are white, and Pollo, who is black, barely feel the underlying restlessness that threatens the beauty of their summer. Bo, the narrator, doesn't think a lot about the Jim Crow laws and the narrow-minded thinking of the time and place. He doesn't give much thought to the "settlement," the socially invisible community of black people who provide domestic service and labor in his town. Then, Bubba arrives and claims Mae Maude as his, and when he finds that she has befriended Pollo, and defends him as well, the carefree summer takes a violent turn. Ten years pass. Pollo has become a minister, and, also, a target for the local Ku Klux Klan. After what starts out as a tense reunion with him, Bo begins to piece together the puzzle of what really happened at the end of that summer. This is a courageous and unsettling novel. It is fast paced and gripping, and the main characters, portrayed with compassion and occasional humor, have substance and vulnerabilities. History is both lived and revisited in this compelling story.
Susanne Bardelson, Arvada Public Library, Jefferson County, CO
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Martin's novel chronicles the remarkable friendship of Bo, a white preacher's kid, and Pollo, an African American less daunted by his racist southern community than he probably should be. Separated by race and by church, the two are united, initially, by a beautiful girl who flirts extravagantly with them both. The friendship is solidified at a church camp cabin, and their modest distance from the outside world while there allows the boys to transcend their historical circumstance in their examinations of religious and cultural heritage. Though Martin, completely paralyzed by ALS, wrote much of the novel with painfully slow eye-gazing software, his voice never abandons him. This is first-rate southern writing--a torrent of words and images that brings life and depth to what might otherwise have been just another novel of the civil rights movement. Through his flawed but heroic teenage characters, Martin shares keen observations about racism and the role religion can play both to liberate and to oppress. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345456912
• ISBN-13: 978-0345456915
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,293,819 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful and unique story, February 3, 2002

By 

Cherie Clark (Morrisville NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fire in the Rock (Hardcover)

I just finished reading Fire in the Rock, and wanted to comment about how moved I was by this story. It came to my attention only because its publisher is Novello Festival Press, a division of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Public Libraries here in Charlotte, NC, where I work as a part time library aide. The author is Joe Martin, a resident of Charlotte. This is his first novel, and he previously co-authored a book called On Any Given Day, which chronicles his life dealing with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Mr. Martin is a very expressive writer, and the descriptions of people and events are full of vivid detail. You may notice that I gave the book a four star rating rather than five. I wonder if my feeling might be more a reflection of my unfamiliarity with the settings and circumstances depicted, rather than a weakness on the part of the author. I wish I could give it 4 ½ stars.

This is a story told by Bo, a white Presbyterian minister's teenaged son, about himself and his two friends, Pollo, a black boy, and Mae Maude, a white girl. Race plays an important role in this story, as the three friends spend an idyllic summer together in 1956 in rural South Carolina. But the summer ends with a catastrophic event that changes the lives of two of the friends forever. Suddenly the story shifts to 1966, when Bo is a graduate student at Duke University, and Pollo has become a minister. The two meet again in the middle of events that will affect the status quo between the races in their small town.

As a "Yankee" living here in the South now, I don't feel qualified to comment on how realistically this book portrays the relationships between southern blacks and whites in that period. I was particularly struck by Bo's acceptance of the customary roles of blacks and whites while at the same time he didn't seem completely comfortable, either. He is ashamed when he has to admit false judgments he grew up accepting, and becomes confused or angry when he faces untrue assumptions that others make about him. My favorite scene in the book is when, as adults, Bo and Pollo attend a formal dinner party together in a northern city. The hosts and other guests rudely misjudge Bo, making him feel ignored and devalued as a human being. For the first time in his life, Bo was in a situation where he suffered the treatment Pollo obviously had endured his entire life. I'm not sure Bo saw the irony, but Pollo clearly did and it seems that certainly the author intended the reader to notice it, too.

This book was worth my time, both as an enjoyable visit to an unfamiliar place and time, and as an opportunity to read something that challenged my perspective.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars contemplative "Rock" illuminates, informs and inspires, August 1, 2003

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fire in the Rock (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

It is a rare quality of a debut novel to successfully incorporate enlightenment, inspiration and historical reflection. Joe Martin's "Fire in the Rock," a sensitive and provocative examination of race, friendship and the influence of the past, is a stunning work. Not only does "Rock" compel us to participate in a thoughtful dialogue about race, the novel engages our heart through its brilliant characterizations. Martin introduces us to people we come to care about deeply. Through a stirring, subtle narrative, which spans the decade of the onset and flowering of the civil rights movement, change is constant, but the evolution of the characters is anything but fluid, as they are weighed down not only by race, but by the burdens of a racially-charged past.

The author requires patience from his readers. Characters' names evolve; their identities, deftly nuanced, intensify and deepen as they come to grips with the tension engendered by struggle against racism and past restrictions. Bigotry and violence, implicit throughout the novel, affect friendships, force personal confrontations and elicit either great courage or craven cowardice. Change, often unpredictable, sudden and explosive, never occurs easily, and each character must battle not only nerves, but the weight of a veiled past.

"Rock" treats the complex, deep freindship between two young men: Bo Fisher and Paul (Apollo) Templeton. Idealistic and sensitive, Bo yearns to learn of the world, struggling against his status as the sheltered son of the town's liberal Presbyterian minister and his wryly assertive mother. This earnest, naive white teen matures through and with his relationship with Paul, whose racial consciousness transforms him from figurative blindness to profound sight, from a shadowed existence to a piercing leadership in the civil rights movement, from insularity to engagement. Through dialogue, books and play, Bo and Paul forge a friendship which challenges racial convention. Martin's delightful incorporation of the Tarzan myth, and how it reflects and refracts Bo and Paul's perceptions, serves as a metaphor not only of the two men, but of the nation in which they are coming of age. Ultimately, both men are informed and influenced by W.E.B. DuBois instead of racial fiction.

"Rock" contains provocative commentary on Southern identity. Bo, on a trip to Philadelphia, discovers himself to the the outcast, the social pariah. He muses about spoken and written English, ponders why Southerners are the ones said to have an accent instead of New Yorkers and Chicagoans. Why don't publishers "render Southern accents with correct standard spelling and put the various Northern accents in dialect"? In addition, the novel investigates the desire for and understanding of attraction, a drawing together of not only men and women, but Blacks and whites. "Rock," through the example of an elderly African-American storekeeper, brilliantly probes the impact of past horrific violence and the ability of its victims to incorporate horror and overcome the paralyzing influences childhood terror continues to exert as victims age.

Even in darkness "there ae moments of unmistabkable light." Through a narrative that gains momentum, characters who grab our strongest feelings and philosophical issues that challenge us to think, "Fire in the Rock" illuminates.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good insight into the south in the 50's/60's, July 7, 2003

By 

Shelley F. Reynolds "shelley reynolds" (mahtomedi, minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fire in the Rock (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

I love to read about the south, this book took my there and even farther. I liked Pollo and Bo, wanted more of Mae Maude and the baby she gave up. I would like to read more of this author.