Night of the Moonbow

At a Bible-focused summer camp for boys, their obsessive need to be "the best" transforms a group of campers into boys obsessed with revenge

Tryon ( The Other ) sends Leo Joaquim, his orphaned 13-year-old hero, to Camp Friend-Indeed in Connecticut in the summer of 1938, and does his best to show that the behavior of the kids at this American-as-apple-pie camp parallels that of the Nazi movement in Germany. Gifted, troubled and therefore "different," Leo arouses the animosity of his gung-ho and intolerant counselor Reece Hartsig. Leo also makes some friends in his bunk group and gets the sympathetic attention of Fritz Auerbach, an Austrian refugee who is head of Arts & Crafts, as well as of warmhearted women like the camp director's wife and a rich neighbor of the camp. But in the main Leo meets with incomprehension and adolescent meanness. The story is an intimate, detailed one of camp life and its vicissitudes until the political parallels become overt, the human storm breaks and tragedy takes over. If this sounds interesting, it is not. It is good-hearted, prosy, plodding and terribly familiar. 75,000 first printing; Literary Guild dual main selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although the publishers apparently intend to aim this novel at the horror market, the only horror it contains is people's inhumanity to one another--or in this case, boys' inhumanity to the oddball. Leo Joaquim, living at an orphanage, is given the miracle of a summer at Camp Friend Indeed. From the first, though, he doesn't fit in. Clumsy at sports, preferring to play the violin and collect nature specimens, he soon becomes the object of the other campers scorn; and gradually the healthy competitiveness encouraged by Friend Indeed degenerates into an endurance test between Leo and Reece Hartzig, the camp's spoiled golden-boy counselor. Leo's mind holds a tragic secret, and as the campers' pranks become more vicious and sadistic, his memories threaten to erupt in uncontrollable violence. This Literary Guild dual main selection, by the author of The Other and Harvest Home , will be in demand at public libraries.
- A.M.B. Amantia, Population Crisis Committee Lib., Washington,
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.