Full Service
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The times they are a-changin' . . .
The summer that Paul turns sixteen his mother pushes him to take a job in town instead of just working on the family farm. "You need to meet the public," she says, which is saying a lot for a woman deeply committed to the tightly knit religious community to which they belong. And meet the public Paul does: He meets Kirk, the angry gas station manager; Harry, a reclusive and kindly gangster; and a family of hippies passing in a yellow peace van to San Francisco. He also meets beautiful Peggy, a high school sensation, and dark-haired Dale, her onthe-side boyfriend who is headed to Vietnam. All of them come to the station – as well as girls on summer vacation, tanned and smelling of coconut oil, and ministers from Paul's fundamentalist church, who are worried about his soul. As the summer progresses, Paul learns the secrets of his small Minnesota town and discovers that he's ready to have a few secrets of his own.
With richly developed characters and a flair for arresting imagery, Will Weaver tells the story of the end of one boy's innocence, unfolding at a time when the country as a whole is undergoing a difficult, deeply disturbing coming-of-age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weaver once again makes the most ofthe rural Midwestern settings and quiet moral dilemmas he used to such strong effect in his baseball trilogy (Striking Out; Farm Team; Hard Ball) in this intimate coming-of-age novel set in 1965 Minnesota. Farm boy Paul Sutton, who narrates, has been sheltered by his strict, religious parents. He gets his first opportunity to "meet the public" when he takes a job at a Shell filling station in the nearby town of Hawk Bend the summer he turns 16. Paul's horizons are indeed broadened by the people with whom he works (fatherly Mr. Davies, the owner, and Kirk, the womanizing manager), and the author crafts gem-like vignettes of his encounters with the locals and tourists who frequent the service station (one especially memorable exchange is with a woman driving a Mercedes coupe whose husband has just left her). Paul befriends a retired gangster, becomes involved in a love triangle among three recent high-school graduates and hears differing opinions about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Perhaps Paul is most influenced by a family of hippies, who end up staying on the Suttons' farm after their bus breaks down. Exposed to new values and beliefs, Paul begins to question what he has been taught by his parents. Despite the story's setting in the past, Paul's quiet rebellion, fueled by a variety of profound encounters, expresses universal truths about growing pains, teen desires and new insights he has gained. Ages 12-up.