Catch
Grade 10 Up–During the summer between his high school graduation and leaving for state college, Tim Temples works and drinks hard and discovers that he is not alone at the center of his own universe. In the course of about 15 weeks, he watches his older brother–a former baseball star like their father–degenerate socially and physically for no obvious (to Tim) reason. It's during this same time that he is smitten for the first time in his young womanizing life. Helena is more than five years his senior, hard-bitten by life and her own sarcastic attitude, and only Tim believes that the affair has lasting potential. Daytimes are spent working in a food packaging plant, hauling boxes, and noticing that his old high school friends are quickly fading into the old men who staff the plant year round. Only belatedly does Tim realize that he is different from most of his friends, most of his family, most of the town. He's leaving to be a college guy, in a world just down the highway but very far away in terms of prospects. Leitch draws readers to Tim slowly and places him within a cast of characters who are finely etched, realistic, and memorably quirky. Teens will recognize people they know among these characters, some admirable, most deeply flawed, all genuine. This is a keenly felt and absorbing read about this bittersweet rite of passage.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.