cover image Capture the Flag

Capture the Flag

Rebecca Chace. Simon & Schuster, $23 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-684-85758-9

Adolescence forms a shaky bridge between childhood and the adult world in this tender coming-of-age novel, though Annie Edward's chaotic journey is more perilous than usual. Beginning in the late 1960s, Annie's socially elite parents leave their Manhattan home and take their annual family summer vacation at an upstate New York country house owned by their friends the Shanlicks. The Shanlicks are like the Brady Bunch on acid: Peter and Janis have both been married before, and all five of their precocious, tough children come from their previous unions. Justin, the oldest, brutally introduced Annie to sex when she was 11, and she's craved his approval ever since; through drunken, drugged summers the kids' alliances and liaisons with each other shift as dramatically and frequently as their relationships with their many parents and stepparents. In 1975, when she is 14, Annie's parents are newly divorced, and her father, Luke, brings his new girlfriend on their family vacation for the first time. The game of the book's title is a summer ritual for the families, and Annie clings with fierce devotion to the enterprise as if victory will somehow clarify her place in the world, especially with her father. Decked out in black clothes and camouflage face paint, Annie sets out to capture the flag, and one by one stumbles across dark family secrets--stepsiblings making love, marital infidelity--which reverberate through the rest of the novel. When one of the girls becomes pregnant and Annie and another girl fall in love, the fierce loyalties and bitter betrayals come to the heartbreaking and resonant resolution. This is Chace's debut novel, after a successful memoir (Chautauqua Summer) and a play (Colette), and despite a slow pace at first, it swells with the openhearted fearlessness and perpetual confusion of adolescence, piercing nostalgic moments with the earthy, sorrowful taste of a young girl learning, the hard way, about love and family. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. (Aug.)