"That summer in Frenchtown / in the days / when I knew my name / but did not know who I was, / we lived on the second floor / of the three-decker on Fourth Street." Crisp, clear memories make events and feelings of long ago palpable and alive in Robert Cormier's finely honed story of a young boy's summer of awakening. Frenchtown is the working class urban neighborhood that comprises Eugene's universe: tall tenements peopled with adults of mystery and children who are enemy, friend, or the first object of Eugene's affection. There is the Catholic church and Father Balthazar, who has the power to absolve Eugene of his sins. There is Uncle Med, the "happy uncle," who lives above LaGrande's Ice Cream Parlor ("the smell of chocolate / rising through the floorboards") and whom Eugene sometimes catching staring out his window, a look on his face that is impenetrable to a child. At the center of this universe is Eugene's family-an older brother full of roguish mischief and athletic grace, so unlike Eugene himself;, a mother with so much love and sadness; and a father who is "as unknowable as a foreign language," and from whom Eugene longs for attention and notice. There is nothing nostalgic about the short vignettes that comprise this novel: the writing is vivid and sharp, each scene unfolding with exceptional clarity of place and feeling, and the only sweetness comes in those rare moments that were already sweet in the making. (Age 12 and older)

Eugene remembers the summer of 1938 in Frenchtown, a time when he began to wonder what I was doing here on the planet Earth. This touching, funny, melancholy chronicle of a vanished world celebrates a son's connection to his father and human relationships that are timeless.