The First Thing Coming - Softcover

Abbott, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0918273315 ISBN 13: 9780918273314

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 1987

Synopsis

Stories set in the Pacific Northwest of the 1960s deal with high school students, recent graduates, and men and women looking back on their first ten years as independent adults

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Abbott (Harum Scarum) offers 22 loosely related stories about a group of young men growing up in Washington State in the 1950s. The boys love cars, hang out, talk about their girlfriends, learn to drink, and, all too soon, they grow old and have trouble adjusting to life on their own. In "A Little Surprise," Pete Dwyer and his girlfriend Cheri Evers make love for the first time in the backseat of her parents' car, which is parked deep in the woods, but the tender moment that follows is abruptly shattered when Pete realizes the battery's gone dead. Years later, in "A 1957 Ford," Pete, who by now drinks heavily and plans to reenter college after having been thrown out once, visits a well-off, independent Cheri, and when it becomes obvious she doesn't care for him, he leaves quietly in the middle of the night, crying and rationalizing that he no longer loves her. Sometimes self-conscious and overwritten, these stories nonetheless poignantly and comically capture the loss of innocence of boys growing up.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0918273315
• ISBN 13: 9780918273314
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 226