Stranded in Harmony

While struggling with the changes he faces during his senior year in a small Indiana town, Lucas gains insight through a unique friendship with a former Vietnam war protester

Grade 6 Up. A rich study of a confused, high school senior who is riddled with raging hormones and longs to escape his small-town life. Lucas is captain of the football team, has a scholarship offer in his pocket, and a popular cheerleader at his side. He is bored and dissatisfied with his life, however, and when he fears that his girlfriend may be pregnant, he realizes that he is not in love with her. Filled with turmoil, he often escapes to his elderly cousin's cabin. A long-term reclusive invalid, Ronnie Dale needs lots of care. Enter the mysterious Allie, a middle-aged woman who is renting a nearby cabin. Both Lucas and Ronnie Dale immediately feel comfortable with this stranger, and Allie reluctantly agrees to be a resource for the teen's '60s research project. He eventually discovers that she is still trying to come to terms with her militant SDS activities during college. As he spends more time with Allie, he loses touch with his school persona. In the end, he is able to make decisions that are right for him. In a highly believable manner, this compelling and highly textured novel weaves together yearnings for freedom, family friction, political issues of the '60s, and personal traumas. Shoup respects her readers' intelligence by not offering any easy outs or cardboard villains. Multidimensional characters and a plot that clearly shows actions and reactions encourage YAs to look at decision making on several levels. Randy Powell's Dean Duffy (Farrar, 1995) shares similar themes.?Marilyn Payne Phillips, University City Public Library, MO
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sudden friendship with an older woman gets a small-town football hero through a tough transition in this introspective story from Shoup (Wish You Were Here, 1994). Fully equipped with a loyal buddy, a passionate cheerleader girlfriend, a stable home, an offer of a football scholarship, and a prosperous used-car business to inherit from his father, Lucas looks beyond his senior year and feels the town of Harmony, Indiana, closing in on him. His performance on and off the field slides, and he demonstrates a new talent for rubbing everyone the wrong way. Lucas finds a needed confidante in Allie Bowen, a new resident who shares his taste for '60s music. Offering both a sympathetic ear and hard-earned wisdom as (she eventually confesses) a Vietnam Warera terrorist who did time for murder, she helps him weather a series of crises, from the realization that he no longer wants to play football to his blackly humorous panic attack following a night of unprotected sex. Unlike Rich Wallace's Wrestling Sturbridge (1996), the sports action is downplayed; Lucas focuses less on external events than on his own anger and turmoil, so dramatic tension builds largely on the emotional plane--unusual in a teen novel with a male protagonist. Lucas manages to loosen the ties that bind him to Harmony, and is last seen not in rebellion, but comfortably contemplating his many options--a true '90s ending. (Fiction. 13-15) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 7^-10. The backdrop may be familiar--a frustrated teenager is cooped up in a small midwestern town--but inside this story is a gem of a friendship between 18-year-old Lucas and fortysomething Allie, who moves in nearby. Lucas seems to be on the fast track to success: he's a football star who gets good grades and goes out with a beautiful cheerleader, and he's only biding his time before heading off to college. But during his senior year, he begins to chafe under his responsibilities and finds himself treating his girlfriend badly one day and begging her forgiveness the next. Enter Allie, a woman coming to terms with a mistake in the past, who helps Lucas make a new start without destroying everyone and everything around him. Despite the main character's emotional ups and downs, this is a surprisingly upbeat (some may say too upbeat) story, one that sees friendships shatter and mend, and one that shows parents trusting a son's decision. Randy Meyer