It is 1967 and drugs, Vietnam, and family farms giving way to corporate farming are the topics of conversation in many Iowa communities. Charles Weaver is graduating from his small, Iowa farming town high school as the valedictorian. He has great plans for his last summer in town before going off to Des Moines to attend Drake University - including finally having sex with his long-time sweetheart. But life plans are rarely as well ordered in reality as they are in desire. Charles and his girlfriend break up, and Charles gets a summer job working with the local street crew.

Working with the street crew is a surprise to everyone who knows Charles. The son of a local attorney and city council member, Charles doesn't appear to be cut out of manual labor. He's a scholar, likely to become a lawyer like his father. Could he last more than a day working up a sweat, shoveling tar to fill pot holes or driving tractors?

But Charles will learn valuable lessons from this over-worked, under-paid, mostly uneducated crew. Not only will he last more than a day, but he will seem to thrive in his time with the gruff but resolute men on the crew. And this won't be the only surprise for those in town who know the boy ... he begins to date the daughter of the crew chief - a girl he knew only slightly in school - who has a troubled history that she can't seem to shake, though Charles may be an answer to some of her prayers.

While I have the inclination to refer to this as a 'coming of age' story, I feel that the term is almost demeaning to a book with this much power. Labeling the book only puts it on the same metaphorical shelf as all the other 'coming of age' stories and really this one is different somehow.

Of course Charles comes of age here ... graduating high school is only the first step in the growth that we'll see along the way. Seeing his father in a new light - the way others see him as well as seeing him man-to-man rather than son-to-father is very much another step on Charles' path to adulthood.

But we also have his physical maturity - almost overly obvious with the recognizable muscle growth on his skin frame from all the hard labor he performs over the summer. He'll also encounter his first dead body and face corruption and evil at its ugliest.

And sex. Well ... perhaps here we're reminded that Charles is still a boy and hasn't fully come of age just yet.

Though I'm a tad younger than the main character of the book, I did grow up in a rural Midwestern town during the Vietnam era. I recognized these people and these situations. I saw bits of myself in Charles (or bits of Charles in my youth?) which made this particularly poignant to me.

There were moments that I wanted to see a different result - for someone to react differently or to make a different decision. However, in each case I realized that the author's choice wasn't always his to make - sometimes the characters really did seem to have a life of their own.

All the featured characters are strong, unique, and easily identifiable. Is it because I grew up in a small town and now live in an even smaller town, that I can precisely picture each and every one of the people named here?

Looking for a good book? Summer of Love and Evil by Michael Kinnamon is a powerful story of a young man's journey through love and evil and death and growth into adulthood.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This was a compelling coming of age story that I found very enjoyable. It was beautifully written and had characters that will stay with you.
Many thanks to Publerati and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

It’s 1967 in a small town in rural Iowa, and Charles Weaver’s last summer before he heads off to college. He gets a summer job working with a street crew and suddenly a whole new world opens up to him; meeting the other members of the crew, working at all the many jobs he’s never thought about before, and toughening him up both physically and emotionally. A true coming-of-age tale. A summer romance expands his horizons even more, and it all combines to bring home to him that there is another world outside his cushioned middle-class privileged life style. I thoroughly enjoyed this beautifully written, immersive and relatable novel. The measured prose, with not a word wasted, the gentle understated approach, and the empathetic portrayal of all the characters found me caught up in the narrative from the very first page. It’s not a saccharine or romanticised portrait of small-town life, but one that felt very real to me. A great read.

This is a beautifully written coming of age novel about a young boy, Charles, growing up in a small town in rural Iowa. In the weeks before he leaves to go to university, Charles, at his father’s suggestion, takes on a holiday job with the local street crew. During this time, Charles finds love and is exposed to people and ideas that he had never before come across. The town around him changes from his familiar boyhood idyllic to a terrain in which there is a subtle divide between those with money and those who have only dreams, and between good and evil. A most engaging read. Thanks to the author, Publerati and NetGalley for the ARC.

Charles has just graduated high school in 1967 and spending the summer before college working with the city crew in his small hometown in Iowa. There Charles learns that the work is harder than the town gives the crew credit for and he also comes to appreciate those hard working men.

I was raised in similar small town where my father worked at the city water plant so this book felt like reading about home where people knew everyone else and took care of each other.

I enjoyed this slice of small town life. My only note is that I would have liked a last chapter with an update on what happened to the main characters. All in all, a great book