Romey's Place

Smalltown ""church-ruled"" Easton, Wis., takes center stage in Schaap's (In the Silence There Are Ghosts) earnest, thoughtful coming-of-age novel. As middle-aged Lowell Prins helps his elderly father to sort through the belongings of a lifetime, he reflects on the fateful events of his last summer before high school during the late 1950s. His recollections soon become a study in contrasts, juxtaposing two very different fathers, and their sons, who have more in common with their fathers than they would like to think. Lowell's dad, Pete, is a ""big-time Christian"" and the town ""saint."" Cyril Guttner, the abusive father of Lowell's best friend, Romey, is the town pariah. In the black-and-white world of 1950s Easton--where gangs of kids picking green beans constitute a youth culture and an unpardonable sin is being caught in the girls' barracks at Bible camp--moral issues loom large. The retrospective account of this fateful period in Lowell's life is, for the most part, a familiar litany of youthful experiences (stealing cigarettes, finding summer jobs, attending town dances), but Lowell and Romey's religious discussions differentiate it from similar tales. Romey half-reveres and half-resents Lowell's faith, just as Lowell simultaneously admires and fears Romey's tough-talking ways. When events culminate in a misguided prank that turns deadly, a confrontation between fathers, sons and the town is inevitable. Looking back on those events, Lowell, now the curator for a small county museum, must come to terms with the rigid righteousness, which he sees as his father's legacy and which he blames for poisoning his friendship with Romey. Religious devotion, family loyalty and the dynamics of friendship are ultimately seen as issues subject to several moral interpretations, and Lowell finally understands that ""if my father taught me goodness... Romey taught me grace."" (Oct.)