American Summer - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly

Anyone who remembers the fearful summers before the Salk vaccine wiped out polio will relate to Deford's novel of the 1950s. Those who warm to stories in which appealing teenagers come of age will also find resonance here. The narrator, 14-year-old Christy Bannister, recently transplanted from Terre Haute, Ind., to Baltimore, rescues a lost dog from danger, then meets its owner, 23-year-old Kathryn Slade, a victim of polio, who is kept alive by an iron lung. Christy is having a tough time adjusting to his new surroundings, both in making new friends and in dealing with ethical problems involving his father, who is having an affair and also being blackmailed by his company's owner into firing a longtime employee. Kathryn provides the example he needs; she is cheerful and lives life as fully as her handicap allows. A serious swimmer before her illness, Kathryn offers to coach Christy in her pool, so he can compete in the annual Labor Day extravaganza. Christy has seen home movies of Kathryn when she was his age, and it's not difficult for him to imagine her as his girlfriend. They fulfill each other's needs as Kathryn requires a project to take her mind off her condition, while Christy desperately needs a friend and mentor. A subplot about Christy's 17-year-old sister, Sue, who is raped by a neighbor, serves more to demonstrate the mores of the 1950s than to enhance the plot. Still, Deford (The Other Adonis) manages to twang the heart strings without being maudlin or sentimental, while delivering two memorable characters. (Sept. 2) Forecast: An easy read for a day at the beach, this simply written story could also qualify as a bridge book for young adults. Sourcebooks plans a 35,000 first printing and six-city author tour. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-In the summer of 1954, Christy Bannister, 14, and Kathryn Slade, 23, forge a unique friendship. He has just moved into a new subdivision next to a wealthier neighborhood. Rescuing their puppy endears Christy to the Slades, whose daughter, once an accomplished athlete, now lives in an iron lung. Kathryn, who is wheeled every morning to her family's pool, decides to coach Christy so that he can compete in the boys' medley race held at the Slades' pool at the end of the summer. His older sister's romance with handsome, sophisticated Eddie ends in date rape by the pool, by chance witnessed by Kathryn, whose action helps salvage Sue's reputation. Christy's idyllic summer, ending in his victory in the race, is tempered by lessons about friendship, love, loneliness, honor, and forgiveness. The following spring, Kathryn's death adds the pain of loss to the lessons of his coming-of-age summer. Flashes of humor and the matter-of-fact viewpoint of a teenage boy keep this story from becoming maudlin or sad. The language of teens of the '50s is dead-on, and family life is deftly conveyed. However innocent the time may appear to today's readers, they will identify with the exhilaration and the pain of growing up, both movingly portrayed here.-Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Upper-crust Baltimore in 1955 is the dynamic setting of Deford's seventh (after The Other Adonis, 2001, etc.): an otherwise treacly coming-of-ager about a new boy in town who's befriended by a wealthy neighbor in an iron lung. For a time, Christy Bannister, 14, is the only child in the only house in Baltimore's newest (possibly first) subdivision, having just moved that summer from Indiana with his dad, the new president of a local enameling factory. While trying to build a newspaper route, he saves a mutt from becoming roadkill and is rewarded by being welcomed into the social-register family that owns the mutt, the Slades. A quick friendship blooms between Christy and Kathryn, a beauty struck down by polio at age 17 and now in her mid-20s, who, in her portable iron lung, spends her days by the side of the pool her parents built for her. She makes Christy feel at home; he in turn makes her feel almost like a teenager again. Although she can move no more than her head, she secretly (by teaching him the brand-new butterfly stroke) grooms him to win the summer-ending swimming race, a medley for those 16 and under that's to be held at the pool. The rest of Christy's family arrives midsummer, including Big Sis Sue, at 17 pining for the heartthrob she left behind in Indiana but soon enamored of Eddie, the Yalie older brother of one of Christy's poolmates, who is, in the local vernacular, "shoe." Eddie drops his suave manner one moonlit night by the pool, however, obliging both Christy and Kathryn to come to Sue's defense. But then Christy finds out that ol' Pop went too far himself while the family was away-and grows up fast. A story with an astute sense of the mores and tensions of a place.Unfortunately, the only really interesting characters are the bit players, seldom seen. First printing of 50,000; author tour