Toughing It [Paperback]

Nancy Springer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1994

Tuff’s father is gone and his mother can barely care for her pack of children in their riverside trailer. Dillon is the only person Tuff can rely on. Then Tuff’s life is shattered when his older brother is senselessly murdered. When he leaves home in search of Dillon’s killer his mother yells out a name--Penrose Leppo--Tuff’s father. Tuff finds a haven at Pen Leppo’s little shack of a store. As he desperately attempts to figure out who killed his brother, Tuff finds an ally in Pen--and most important, a friend who makes him realize that solving the murder won’t bring Dillon back.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This strange book starts out as almost unbearably painful and ends as unbelievably blithe. Tuff is riding with his older brother, Dillon, on the back of his dirt bike, when Dillon is absurdly killed--shot by a rigged gun along a mountain path. Dillon's death is particularly devastating to Tuff; the boy has no father and lives with an apparently cruel, alcoholic mother, her brutish boyfriend and a legion of bellicose, underfed half-brothers and sisters. Springer quickly establishes the difficulties her characters face in trying just to get by without much money, power or mobility. Vowing to track down the murderer, Tuff leaves home, whereupon his mother suddenly discloses the identity of his father. The grim scenario is swiftly lightened, with the man named as Tuff's father proving to have the forbearance of Gandhi, the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes and the marksmanship of a Clint Eastwood character. It doesn't much matter when he divulges that he's not Tuff's dad after all, because he's willing to play the part. The mother, meanwhile, turns out to have only Tuff's best interests at heart; the villains are caught; and Tuff finds both a love interest and peace of mind. Far from satisfying. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-10-Tuff, 16, is from an economically disadvantaged home, has a mean stepfather, several younger half siblings, and an often-drunk mother. His world falls apart in an instant when he witnesses his older brother's murder-Dillon had been his stability. Bent on revenge, he finds a friend in Pen Leppo, the man he thinks may be his father. After several attempts to solve the crime, Pen helps Tuff realize that finding the killer will not bring Dillon back. This is an emotionally gripping novel that grabs readers' attention right from the first page. The plot and main characters are well developed; they see Tuff's gradual acceptance of his brother's death and his discovery of a trusted friend in Pen. His anger and grief are palpable as he tries to deal with his loss. Secondary characters, however, are a bit sketchy. Nonetheless, Springer has created a contemporary story for YAs that deals with real problems. A good choice for reluctant readers.
Judy R. Johnston, Auburn High School, WA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 119 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (November 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152000119
• ISBN-13: 978-0152000110
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,021,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.

My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.

Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.

Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.

Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.

"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.

"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.

Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.

By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.

It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.

It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.

Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars The vulgar language is unnecessary, November 14, 2009

By 

Sam Rhodes - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Toughing It (Paperback)

This would have been a good book to recommend, but it is FULL of unnecessary vulgar language. Lots of parent complaints about it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth reading, December 18, 2001

By 

A Reader ([e-mail]) (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toughing It (Hardcover)

I read the German version of the book about a year ago and I liked it because you are confronted with problems our society uses to ignoring, such as alcoholism, teenagers who have difficulty with their (step-)parents due to divorces or don't even know their fathers.
After his brother's death, Shawn (called Tuff) swears to take revenge on the murderer and is completely despaired for he has lost the most important person in his life. When he gets to know the man his mother regards as his biological father, that man convinces him that it would make no sense to lose control and Shawn realizes his life has to be continued without his brother Dillon.

5.0 out of 5 stars Toughing It by Nancy Springer, December 12, 2001

By 

Joe Som, the editor of the New York Times (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toughing It (Paperback)

Toughing it is a book about adolescent anger. Tuff is a teenage boy living in a poor neighborhood. His mother has many children with many fathers. Tuff does not recive any affection from her as she is busy with her boyfriends and children. Dillon, his brother, is his only source of affection. So everything is shattered when Dillon is senselessly murdered before his eyes. His drunk mother couldn't care less. So Tuff sets out to find Dillon's killer. Toughing It is about his struggle to accept his brother's death and his lust to track down the killer. Tuff finds that nothing is to be gained by killing the killer. This book is an action-packed exploration of teenage anger and coping with grief. Toughing It overflows with emotion. It deserves many more than five stars. I recomend this book for people 13+ because of severe language. Toughing It is an aweome book.