Drawing on his own childhood, Ron Molen recalls the experiences of a young Mormon boy growing up in a Catholic neighborhood near Chicago in the 1930s. Tom, known as "Wart, " joins other youngsters in building treehouses, digging tunnels, making up secret code words, and vaunting their one-upmanship over a rival gang at the skinny-dipping hole.Wart is mystified by the adult preoccupation with religion and politics, and with that most cruel imposition on youth, summer school. When he tells friends about his parents' trip to the Salt Lake temple to be "married, " this leads to inscrutable misunderstandings among his mother's bridge group. He wears a "Vote for Landon" pin on his shirt that draws insults from otherwise polite, porchfast grandpas.
Little wonder that he prefers his group's hideaway to whatever plans grownups have for him. It's more fun dreaming up shenanigans to keep the neighborhood in turmoil. How could he and his friends resist spying on local gangsters, sneaking into the river-bottoms hobo camp, or investigating the rumored-to-be-haunted pickle factory?
But eventually the boys see something more than they had bargained for, and this launches them on a Hardy Boys-like adventure. Written with obvious nostalgia, readers may find these memories are much like their own.
