Never So Green - Hardcover

Johnston, Tim

3.84

121 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374355096 ISBN 13: 9780374355098

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2002

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School's out in Big River, Iowa, and Tex Donleavy, a kid who keeps his nose in the books and his deformed right hand deep in his pocket, is looking forward to a blissful summer in the company of Linda Volesky, the vivacious beauty who happens to be his father's girlfriend. Instead, Tex gets dumped on his mother's doorstep, where Farley Dickerson, the big oaf she's just married, and his two kids have made themselves at home. Nobody's more surprised than Tex, then, when he discovers he likes his new stepfather, that he actually wants to spend the summer at Mom's, and that he - Tex Donleavy - is going to play ball on Farley's Little League team. And then there's the plucky and brooding Jack, Farley's daughter, who becomes Tex's closest ally, as well as his greatest source of confusion. In all, it's shaping up to be a summer full of surprises - though nothing can prepare Tex for the biggest surprise of all, a secret so terrible that it will change the lives of every member of his family.

Through his careful, lyrical prose, Tim Johnston expertly balances the pain of inching toward maturity with sly humor, making his fiction debut an auspicious occasion.

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About the Author:

Tim Johnston lives in Los Angeles, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

The summer of 1974 is the best of times and the worst of times for sixth-grade graduate Tex Donleavy, who has grown up self-conscious about his deformed right hand. He discovers a new love, baseball; he also uncovers an almost unbearable secret. This impressive first novel opens as the school year ends, when Tex (who has been living with his divorced father) temporarily moves to his recently remarried mother's house. There he meets his boyish stepsister, Jack, a girl his own age who stirs up unfamiliar, confusing feelings in him. Their relationship grows increasingly complicated after Tex receives something Jack has always wanted-a chance to play ball on her father's boys-only Little League team. As Tex starts to feel comfortable with his new family and gains self-esteem through his newfound athletic prowess, his world begins to look as "green" as a baseball diamond. Then he witnesses a shocking act of sexual abuse that dramatically alters his view of his stepfather and stepsister. This hard-hitting tale candidly addresses once-taboo issues in a manner relevant to adolescents. Rather than preaching a moral lesson, Johnston raises provocative questions about family loyalty and the distinctions made between lust, love and endangerment. At the same time, his third-person narration gives Tex a distinctive, wry voice (e.g., Tex describes classmate Melanie Bloom as "a nice, shy, freckled girl who just that spring had undergone the promise of her name"). Although the subject matter is disturbing, it is handled well, and readers will experience cathartic relief as the novel reaches its conclusion. Ages 12-up.
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