Three young friends confront the narrowness and corruption of their small town, obsessed by religion and football, until their dangerous refuge in the affections of one woman leads to downward spiral of rivalry and death. A first novel.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Despite its deceptively simple opening, this first novel about coming of age in 1950s Oklahoma gradually turns into a lurid, albeit fairly compelling, drama of adultery, murder, lust, child abuse and redemption. Narrator William "Sonny" Schultz, water boy for his high school football team, finds athletics a means of breaking free from his controlling mother, a religious fanatic who has him performing baptisms by the time he's 10. Sonny and his best friend, quarterback Danny Boone, are both sexually involved with free-spirited Dovie Lasher, teenage wife of the team's star player, sadistic bully Brice "Killer" Marden. Longstanding hatreds culminate in Killer's beating and humiliation of Danny, who retaliates by circumcising his tormentor with a knife. The stage is set for a sensational finale, involving the uncertain paternity of Dovie's baby; the revelations here will startle even the most alert readers. Reiswig, himself a high school quarterback and later a pastor, peoples the Oklahoma panhandle with driven characters obsessed by football, sex and religion.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The promise of a winning high-school football team corrupts the values of a 1950's Oklahoma town--in a first novel by Reiswig. Narrator Sonny Schultz has a deeply religious Baptist mother who will eventually go crazy, and a father who owns the newspaper in his hometown of Cimarron. Sonny is a mama's boy who wants to be a preacher after an early vision of Jesus, so it's not surprising that he lacks the killer instinct to be a player for his high- school Dustdevils. What puts him in the catbird seat is not the lowly position of team manager, or water boy, but his close friendship with star quarterback Danny Boone, who's fast replacing the older but less motivated ``Killer'' Miller in the town's favor. The merchants press freebies on Danny; the sheriff winks at his theft of some watermelons; older women yearn to be serviced by this hot new stud, including Killer's girl Dovie and the virginal Anne Tendal, whose beauty stopped Sonny in his tracks while he was answering God's call at a crusade for Christ, led by evangelist and communist fighter Joe Don Jones. When Danny loses his fighting spirit after a brush with death, the evangelist ``saves'' him for Christ (and the upcoming season) while forcing Anne, the fleshly distraction, to leave town. As the novel moves slowly toward the championship game and the inevitable bloodletting between Danny and the rival Killer, the guilt-ridden Sonny becomes infected by the win-at-all-costs spirit.... What might have been a powerful indictment of civic and religious hypocrisy is vitiated by Reiswig's ambivalence: part of him wants to see that winning play as youthful derring-do. Add a lack of focus and a weakness for melodrama, and you have a ho-hum debut. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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