Bow's Boy
A Novel
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Every now and then, a small American town produces someone with such out-of-place talent that he seems to have come from a different world. In the 1960s hardscrabble town of Laroque, Wisconsin, seventeen-year-old Ginger Piper, a high school sports hero and a disarmingly poised and articulate young man, is that sort of figure. Or at least G. Bowman Epps—a rich, lonely, middle-aged lawyer—believes he is.
Bow is something of a town legend too: Ungainly and scarred, brilliant and stern, famous for great inherited wealth, he seems a vestige of a time gone by in a town where the legacy of past greatness—embodied in the ornate, decaying, and defunct opera house—casts a literal shadow. But when Bow discovers Ginger Piper, he is energized and inspired. Where others have seen merely a charming basketball star, Bow spies the seeds of something greater and the drive, intelligence, and passion to carry on Bow’s legacy as a groundbreaking criminal attorney. When Bow offers the boy a summer apprenticeship in his orderly practice, it is an investment in a certain future, and the initiation of an oddly matched friendship. But when Ginger is accused of a startling crime that changes the town's perception of him, Bow is not only surprised, he’s also implicated, and forced to choose between his fierce sense of logic and his admiration for the boy.
The story unfolds as the first agonizing repercussions of the Vietnam War are being felt and the American people are struggling to comprehend a new kind of war. It inspires a startling division between the generations at home, as politics and personal lives inevitably collide.
Bow’s investigator, Charlie Stuart, narrates the events thirty years later, adding a perspective colored by tortured memories of his manic father and his halting pursuit of a young woman in town. Anchored by a compelling mystery, Bow’s Boy is ultimately about greatness, heroism, loyalty, and justice, and the pain and solace of family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Vietnam War casts its long shadow over a small Wisconsin town in this second novel by Babcock (Martha Calhoun), which chronicles the dramatic intersection of the lives of two vastly different characters, wealthy criminal attorney G. Bowman Epps and high school athlete Ginger Piper. As narrated by Charlie Stewart, a longtime associate of the lawyer, the story of this unlikely friendship unfolds slowly but deliberately. Bow has a well-earned reputation as a gifted barrister capable of defending the slimiest of criminals, and Ginger is a teenage star from the wrong side of the tracks, but their differences are erased when they meet in the spring of 1966, after Ginger gives a moving eulogy for a high school friend killed in Vietnam. Bow sees Ginger's potential and becomes his mentor, as chronicled in a series of masterful scenes. When Gary Fontenot, a convict defended by Bow, escapes and is found dead nearby, evidence surfaces that Ginger may have helped him flee. As a result, Bow's reputation is tarnished and his friendship with Ginger is strained. After barely surviving his legal woes, Ginger, who had joined the antiwar movement in the area, finds himself facing one crisis after another in the conservative town until he enlists in the army and is shipped off to Vietnam. Babcock's plot is familiar, but carefully crafted characters with meaningful inner lives and distinctive voices keep the reader engaged, and the story builds up to a quiet and powerful conclusion. Babcock accurately and sensitively captures a fraught historical moment and its devastating impact on all of the people who lived it.
