An Ocean in Iowa

In a small town in Iowa, Scotty Ocean has announced that seven is going to be his year. It does turn out to be his year, but not quite the one he had imagined. It is the year his mother abandons the family. At first, Scotty does astonishing things to get her to return. When he realizes she won't be coming back, he decides he must replace her. And when that proves impossible, he takes the dramatic step of trying to remain seven forever.

Funny, sad, and constantly surprising, An Ocean in Iowa explores the fragile contracts between parents and children and what it really means to grow up.

In his carefully understated way, Hedges follows up What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1991) with a boy's tale of quiet desperation when his artist mother suddenly abandons him and his sisters to find herself. Joan Ocean didn't plan to leave her family in West Glen, Iowa, in 1969; but after her latest show of nude self-portraits met with a chilly reception, it just happened that way. Scotty, her seven-year-old youngster, doesn't quite know how it will all turn out, but he's certain that it's all his fault. He turns inward but still does his share of the chores, helping his sister with laundry, and his father the Judge with dinner and the dishes. Joan, who has begun drinking heavily, returns for Christmas, raising everyone's hopes, but she makes it clear that she doesn't want to live with the family anymore, and Scotty finds himself truly at sea. He looks for a substitute for Joan in the pretty mother of a second-grade classmate, but when he crawls under the covers with her during a sleepover, that possibility is eliminated. He acts up in class, wearing for days a football helmet he received for Christmas, runs amok through school when he realizes a visiting artist has lied to them about the color of mountains; and, finally, when Joan is arrested for drunk driving, reduces a vulnerable, trusting classmate to tears by telling her that his mother is going to be executed. None of this brings Joan back, of course, so Scotty decides he's going to stay seven forever, and on the eve of his next birthday he makes use of a grenade, which a neighbor, an ex-soldier, brought back from Vietnam, to keep his pledge. The child's-eye view is finely done, but its limitations are also apparent, as Scotty's world, family, and friends seem at critical moments to be not just imperfect but insubstantial. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

What can you say about a seven-year-old whose mother leaves? It's 1969, and Scotty Ocean thinks that seven will be his year. He does the seven dance for his mother, who smokes and drinks and paints, all too much. But she abandons the family and her art, tries unsuccessfully to abandon alcohol. Scotty's two older sisters, and his rigid father the judge, find different ways of coping, and they tentatively reach toward family life. Scotty, however, in second grade with a strong teacher and a new neighbor with lots of toys and a dad back from Vietnam, is obsessed with his mother's absence, and everything in his life centers on his search for her. Hedges, the author of What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1991), has crammed the novel full of small, note-perfect '60s references--lunch boxes, television shows, commercials (although no one said "big whoop" in 1969, least of all a seven-year-old). There are funny bits, but this is an achingly sad story, and no one comes out all right in the end. GraceAnne A. DeCandido