Map of the Harbor Islands
Hayes' earlier work was suffused by a sense of place--South Boston, to be exact--and to it he returns for this novel of love and friendship. There preadolescent Petey aids stray dogs and injured birds. He's his mother's favorite, a golden boy with straight As and athletic talent in an era when parochial-school windows opened, students feared the nuns, and Little Leaguers wore no batting helmets. His "bestest" friend, Danny, tells how a baseball smashing into Petey's head sends him into a long coma, and that only when Danny visits him does Petey regain consciousness. Petey now has a pronounced stammer and definitely peculiar ways. No longer golden, the boy neglects school, sinks into reveries over the light through the trees, and experiences spiritual enlightenment by bonding with a life energy he calls Birdy. Adulthood arrives with jobs, Danny's military enlistment, and Petey's tortured admission to homosexuality. The limpid, lilting Irish rhythms of Hayes' prose are as reader-seductive as the sweet friendship he depicts.Whitney ScottCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved