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Laurel Johnson
, November 05, 2006
(view all comments by Laurel Johnson)
C.H. Foertmeyer has taken an all-too-familiar sadness in America today - the fate of troubled teens - and breathed new life into the subject. Although Carver features fictional characters and events, the reality was hair raising to me. The author builds his story very well.
Kevin Reynolds, Wiley Coates, and Bryce Spencer are good kids and long time pals, just average teenagers trying to survive their adolescence and enjoy activities they like. Due to various physical, social, or financial shortcomings, all three boys have been objects of ridicule for years. The cruelty of their peers and fellow students is bewildering and more painful as their High School years progress. Still, the boys share common interests - skiing, hunting and camping, exploring the Rocky Mountain wilderness - so they hang together, hoping graduation will change their lot.
Mary Clemmons is a spiteful, snobbish student, spoiled rotten by her wealthy father. Her best friend and confidant is Alicia Koppe, a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Whatever Mary wants, Mary gets by one means or another. And she wants Bryce to pay for telling that she cheated on exams. Her revenge is plotted, and with Alicia's help, Bryce ends up dead. Kevin and Wiley know who caused their friend's death and decide to work their own revenge on the two girls who've made their life a living hell for years.
Foertmeyer makes good use of the Rocky Mountain environs as he builds this tale of good boys driven to an awful revenge by circumstance. In fact, his descriptive passages of the natural, wild beauty of the place lulled me into a false sense of hope about the outcome of Carver. Sheriff Al Dramico and his deputy Stan are sly investigators. Nothing slips by them, and in the end, all the guilty parties pay a different price. How the tale plays out is better left unrevealed by me. I suggest you read the book to learn the answers.
Carver is more than a novel. It's a social commentary on the world we've come to know through shocking vignettes on TV and in the newspaper. It made me shiver just a little, knowing that no matter how good a person is - how noble the motive - we could be forced into a hell not of our making.
I recommend this book for adolescents and adults. There are valid lessons to be learned in it. Mr. Foertmeyer writes well and I'm looking forward to his next creation.
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