Copyright 2018 by David Benjamin. Published by Last Kid Books, Madison WI.
I have mentioned before that the author is my bff from high school. I have read all of his books and have followed his career closely. He is, in the words of my sister-in-law who has also read at least one of his books, a “wordsmith.” He really knows the language (actually, several languages) and can craft a fine story. I think his best book is his collection of essays, Almost Killed by a Train of Thought, but this novel now ranks second, close behind.
The story centers on a summer camp in the woods of Wadsworth County, WI, in the summer of 1968. The protagonist, Franklin Roosevelt Cribbs, or “Cribbsy”, is an 18-year-old counselor, a freshly-minted high school graduate who is eagerly anticipating his entry into college. But for the summer he is responsible for “Smith 3”, one of the cabins housing 16 11- to 15-year old boys with an artistic streak, most of them refugees from the darkest, most dangerous streets of Chicago. Besides the counselors, the camp is run by a contingent of “Work Campers” who are, without exception, paroled felons doing community service to prove that they are trustworthy enough to be allowed back into society. The elements are in place for a rather “interesting” summer. Which also happens to be the summer of turmoil: the murders of MLK and RFK and the police riot that characterized the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Layered on top of this societal and political angst is the presence of a 14-year-old girl who becomes deeply infatuated with Cribbsy. Pathological kids, felonious Work Campers, a hippy-dippy camp director and a jail-bait teen bent on seduction. What could go wrong?
A lot.
Cribbsy skirts with statutory rape, the kids of Smith 3 come close to mob murder and Cribbsy discovers, eventually, that he is not nearly the complete loser that he had convinced himself he was. This is all related in a compelling sequence of chapters, each focusing on one of the more interesting characters in camp, punctuated by entries in Cribbsy’s journal and poems penned by the girl. The dialog is realistic, the stories believable. And it is all wrapped in some pretty insightful commentary on the state of America in the summer of ’68.
The commentary on racial relations were, in my view, particularly insightful. One example: the young girls at Camp Nantoka liked to run their fingers through the hair of Cribbsy (blond) and the other counselor in Smith 3 (redhead). They had never felt soft hair. I had never thought that soft hair would appeal to young black girls, but it rings true. Did the author have that experience in real life?
That question – which of these experiences were derived from David Benjamin’s life? – was in the back of my mind as I read the book. I, after all, spent most of that summer with him (and he was not a camp counselor that summer). I even worked at the Oconomowoc Canning Company with him, so I know that those experiences that he included in the book were true because I shared them with him. There were many other scenes in the book that I know are autobiographical, but I won’t mention them. You can read the book knowing that some of it is true. But which parts?
7.5 out of 10.