Under Watchful Eyes

By: Carter Gregory

Ben met Edna in Sydney, Australia during the tumultuous time of World War II. Ben wishes to join the army at fourteen, but his mother insists he becomes a priest, causing friction in the home. When Ben and Edna run away and spend an innocent day together, their mothers become furious, and Edna and her family move three thousand miles away to Perth. Ben's mother tells him nothing of Edna's whereabouts. And Ben becomes desolate.

Ben is now determined to search for Edna, and escape from an oppressive religion, which proves to be the same quest. As he matures and heads off to school, he meets a new crowd, some of whom aid him in achieving his goals, and others who hinder him: the Lord Bishop of New South Wales, a denounced theologian, a gypsy tarot card reader and her daughter, a decorated war hero, and newspaper reporter, a woman cultivating a garden inside a walled enclosure, and the owner of a call-girl service who is intent on murdering him.

Under Watchful Eyes is no ordinary coming-of-age story. A complex morality burns through to the surface. As the poet Delmore Schwartz wrote, "The great value of art is the exercise of an observing faculty able to confer on commonplace experience a universal value and thus restore significance to the life of the individual."