Like his literary antecedent Huck Finn, Jim Bonham ("Biscuit"), the young narrator of Tom Wright's What Dies in Summer, is a fatherless adolescent being "civilized" by a sharp-tongued older woman, his grandmother Gram. Rather than the Mississippi River, however, he navigates a 1950s south Dallas turf of petty crime, sneaked cigarettes and beer and sex fantasies involving the public swimming pool. Biscuit's world abruptly changes when his cousin Lee Ann ("L.A.") shows up at Gram's house after running away from her abusive father and hard-drinking mother. Biscuit and L.A. form a strong bond when they stumble on the naked body of a mutilated girl in the weeds along the railroad tracks and are caught up in a local manhunt for a sadistic serial killer.
While Wright's first novel has the bones of a murder mystery, its power is in the refreshing voice of Biscuit as it carries us through the murkier mystery of adolescence. Wright brushes his young hero up against a motley cast of characters who give the often bewildered Biscuit the chance to reflect on their frequently humorous eccentricity and occasionally sordid violence.
As Biscuit and L.A. struggle with their own broken families, their involvement with the police and their recognition of the power of sex, Biscuit finds himself growing up. Although he helps solve the murder mystery, the mystery of life remains before him. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.