Where the Heart Was by Glenn Boyer
Where the Heart Was is a coming-of-age, historical fiction novel that primarily follows Bennie Todd and his family from the Civil War to World War II.
Bennie is young, sick, and poor at the height of the Great Depression, but he loves books, learning, and history. These passions serve him well as his family's luck finally improves, and they are able to acquire farm land in Wisconsin.
The question of Bennie's fate is always in the background as he travels, falls in love, learns about life, and watches war get continually closer.
Bennie's and his family's stories are compelling, and the characters are tragic, funny, and believable.
However, the book employs many, many flashbacks and is terribly long--long and complicated enough, in fact, that I think it would have been better as two or even three books. Boyer writes so well that readers wouldn't lose anything by dividing up and slightly simplifying the story. There are some sections that I would have edited out as well just because, in my opinion, they didn't add much of value.
On the other hand, the detail is part of what makes the story so authentic and engaging, and, despite its length, the book is definitely that. I look forward to reading anything else that Boyer offers.
Favorite quotes...
He'd learned long ago that you had to be sneaky sometimes and get scared pretty good to really have fun.
He often dreamed of that library thereafter; in some enchanted metamorphosis it had expanded. Shelf on shelf was filled with exotic, large books with covers all in glowing colors. He always knew they were books that could be obtained absolutely nowhere else. In one of them he would find the secret of creation and life, if only he opened the right book in time.
A person with him would have been a nuisance, wanting to talk when he wanted to listen, to go home when he wanted to linger and watch.
She smiled, the first time either of them had seen her smile, and it changed her wonderfully, lighting up her serious countenance in some remarkable way.
He contrasted it with all the romantic movies he'd seen about cabins in the West and Alaska and figured it was a good thing you couldn't smell movies, or they wouldn't make a cent.
He'd brought his Ph.D. to a jerkwater high school, rather than to a university, so he could live the contemplative life without having to publish or perish. The contemplative life was just about to be derailed.
Some men are as maternal as women, but they never get credit for it. Most of them hate to admit it themselves. And people, like the ninnies that most of them are, say, "Men are all alike." I know better.
