The patch boys

Fifteen-year-old Sammy di Cantini, resident of a mining region of Pennsylvania, is determined to rise above his class, falls disastrously in love with a Protestant, and visits his Mafia brother in New York where he becomes involved in impossible struggles.

This appealing coming-of-age novel takes place in a Pennsylvania mining town during the summer of 1925. Sammy di Cantini, 15 and very bright, lives with his family in a lower-class neighborhood called "the patch." With his friend Will, he spends the summer swimming, talking baseball and pondering his future and his sexuality. The latter seems destined to work itself out, but the former is an ongoing problem. With his father dead in a mining accident and his crippled grandfather a constant reminder of what awaits the men who work in the mines, Sammy is determined to avoid that life. He wants to be rich, and without much idea of what a lawyer does, he dreams of a legal career. It is only when his older brother is killed in a labor dispute that Sammy takes a hard look at reality and begins to think that maybe his only way out of the mines is the priesthood. Parini, a poet and the author of another novel, The Love Run, beautifully captures Sammy's authentic, self-involved young voice.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a beautifully crafted, lyrically written coming-of-age novel set in a Pennsylvania mining region. The narrator, Sammy di Contini, 15-year-old son of an Italian immigrant coal miner, comes of age in the summer of 1925. The summer, which begins idyllically, ends in tragedy when Sammy's older brother Vincenzo is shot while trying to organize local miners. In between, Sammy falls in love, visits his underworld brother Louis in New York, is seduced by Louis's girlfriend and generally has a lot of doubts about himself and the meaning of life. Parini's poetic talents are apparent throughout. Better than any recent writer, Parini successfully captures the contradictory notions of the adolescent male psyche. As Sammy reflects, "that was the worst thing about living: right and wrong were so damnably close that you almost had to try them on to see which was which." Highly recommended. Brian E. Coutts, Rice Univ. Lib., Houston
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.