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| Category: Fiction |
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| About the Book | |
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The pitfalls a boy encounters while growing up during the 40’s and 50’s are very similar to the trials boy’s face today. For example, bullies and boredom don’t change with each new generation. When Little Bobby’s family moves he has to change schools. There he encounters his first bully. The bully changes Little Bobby’s name to Big, and much to his chagrin that name sticks. This book is a first person account of Big, whose early youth is shaped by WWII. But, whose final form is molded by that new and raucous Rock and Roll era found only in the early Fifties. Its chapters follow the chronology of the boy’s life from first grade through high school graduation. Changing relationships between father and son, as both grow older, is par for the course. However, this situation differs from many others because Big is the first born of his father’s second and unintended family. The father has reared two children who are already young adults. To make matters worse Big’s father is older than the grandparents of his friends and classmates. But most importantly, his father is mentally older and stodgier than Big’s real grandfather. But changes in his hidebound father are not brought on by slowly by aging, but they are like the mercurial shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope, fluid and quick. This book recreates the tribulations that Big encounters and how he handles them. It shows the different mores of an earlier era before the advent of television, computers, and electronic games. It goes back to a day when a boy reads or listens to the radio for his entertainment. A broken branch becomes a soldier’s rifle, a cowboy’s pony, or a pirate’s sword. Many readers say this book is a version of TOM SAWYER set in the 1940’s. This is a fine analogy, but soon the six year old pranks morph into ten year old pranks and beyond into the early Fifties and the birth of Rock and Roll. Twists and turns along the way keep the pages turning and all too soon the reader comes to an unexpected ending.
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| About the Author | |
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Bob Sessions has spent many years honing his writing skills. He has also made a fine art of perseverance or procrastination depending upon your point of view. Here are just two examples: he started college in 1958, graduated in 1991, he started this book in 1990, published it in 2009. |