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by John Q McDonald --- 23 May 2005
by Mary Patterson
This is an era in which we look back upon the people who fought World War II as The Greatest Generation (from Tom Brokaw's book of the same title). It is with affection and some nostalgia that we think about these citizens, perhaps especially now in the time when most of them are leaving this life. This novel, set in a small northern town, is about the men and women who went on with their lives during World War II, lives led in a simple, honest and sometimes dramatic way. Maxine Johnson is a senior in high school. Her brother has just left for the war, and she is trying to find her own path in life, without, she hopes, getting stuck in this small town. Her parents once had big dreams, but settled down to their small but honest existence. John Moore is a spirited young man who is ambivalent about his coming induction into the services, and he has to face a town in which most of the young men are already gone. The priest at St. Lucy's church is seen as a drunkard and adulterer by some, and other dark personalities lurk under the surface of everyday life. The book is somewhat melodramatic. Maxine and John have a teenager's romanticized view of the life laid out before them. The war rages only at a distance, and all we really hear of it is the regular funerals of the boys who are not coming home alive. Changes, of course, are afoot, and these bring drama to the novel. Maxine has some growing up to do. The priest is facing a comeuppance. Families are aging. The book was first published in 1966 (and is out of print), so it might have earned its nostalgic quality over time, more than it might have had at its outset. Patterson's descriptions of the town's environment are very sensitive and vivid. The landscape of the town, and particularly the interiors, have a heavy reality that seems to echo the personalities and their interactions throughout the book. The story is about family and one's ties to the environment in which one begins. It is a moody tale, one that feels chilly and dark. But the book paints a genuine, slightly nostalgic, picture of American life during that greatest generation.
See also: [A Nickel's Worth of Ice by Sam Patterson]