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Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro if a
novel about a 14-year old boy’s introduction to evil in
an idyllic New England setting and about his agonizing
conflict with his well-meaning but domineering and
tormented father. The action takes place during one
summer on Hiawatha, a spruce-girt, rock-ribbed island
off the coast of Maine, and the characters are haunted
by obsessions. The time is the late 1960’s when student
and racial rebellion tore the nation.
Alec,
the sensitive dreamy son of a highly respected WASP
corporation executive and an overly protective mother
strikes up a friendship with a black youth, Arthur
Harrison, whose life he has tried to save on the island,
only to find that Arthur saves him.. Arthur Harrison
becomes his best and only real friend. Gradually as the
plot unfolds Alec learns that his father has a mistress
on Hiawatha—a ravishing Puerto Rican woman, Julie Cielo,
whom Alec secretly loves and about whom he fantasies as
his “Dark Lady of the Woods.” Alec, an only child, is
poignantly hurt that his mother has been betrayed but
cannot bring himself to confront his parents with the
cruel knowledge that will cauterize their dishonest,
unhappy marriage. Joseph Ward, a model of integrity to
his business associates in Boston, suspects that his son
is up to something.
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Vengefully, he imposes upon his son a series of tests
and prohibitions, all in the name of building character
in the old New England tradition. Louise Ward, a
doll-like woman with a will of iron, taunts her husband
but never openly accuses him of infidelity, trapped in
the Victorian–princess cage of female submissiveness
erected around her by him. The three conflicted
characters drift toward an appointment with their
sorrowful destiny.
REVIEW
“Chiaroscuro
is a good book, especially for those who have spent
summers on the coast of Maine. (residents and visitors
alike) and for those who have tried to understand the
world of adults; the world of death, deceit and
adultery. The story has an explosive climax and Alec
truly comes of age during his fourteenth summer.”
—Kevin Burnham, editor, The Boothbay Register
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