Review: Compelling first person story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2012
I loved the way the author told this moving story in first person.  The title refers to a favorite pair of purple pants, which was a boyhood school gift.In the novel, the author gives his own words to his older brother, Johnny, who feels unwanted and abandoned. He feels he was unloved and cast off by his birth mother, which hurt him deeply and produced an everlasting hole in his heart. He gets into trouble all the time. He smokes, drinks, steals, goes truant at school and fights with everyone he comes into contact with. Although he hates his parents and the lifestyle example they set, he follows in their footsteps.Before Johnny dies, he realizes he was loved all through his life but hatred made him to blind to see the love.The novel tells of dysfunctional families and the toll it takes on children that continues throughout adulthood.Proud Pants begins and ends with Johnny on his death bed at the young age of thirty-four.I believe it is a compelling read.Jeannie Walker- Award-Winning Author of the true crime book  "Fighting the Devil"