cover image The Leaving Summer

The Leaving Summer

Donal Harding. HarperCollins, $15 (180pp) ISBN 978-0-688-13893-6

Austin, the hero of this moralistic Southern adventure set in 1958, finds an escaped convict lying injured in the woods and decides to save him. The boy's own forsaken position is the only clue to his motivation for the rescue: Austin's mother has recently abandoned her family, and his taciturn father is often absent. Although the convict is reticent about his crime, Austin and his cosmopolitan Aunt Ada both become deeply attached to the man over the long summer. The quaint story, the author's first novel, is about finding love in unusual places, but the characters have little individuality and speak so often in platitudes that it is difficult to identify with them. ""Sometimes it's difficult to tell the hero from the fool,"" Ada tells Austin; a paragraph later she opines, ""Love is like a flower. If you plant it too shallow... roots can't establish."" Scenes of racial conflict, revolving around Austin's African American housekeeper, are resolved with a pat optimism; it feels as if they were included merely to demonstrate that the protagonists are not bigotted. Austin's lonely plight remains largely unchanged, but his character is flavorless enough that readers won't much care. Ages 10-up. (May)