In their thirteenth summer, beneath a sky thickening with summer thunderclouds, four friends rode their bikes to Lafayette Cemetery where the dead are buried above ground. "Their ride to the cemetery on Washington Avenue took them through sunlight dappled across the uneven asphalt of the floral-rimmed streets of the Garden District."
These four young teens are best friends, all from wealthy New Orleans families. It is when they enter Cannon High School that their friendship changes. There they are torn apart by envy, secret passions and greed.
Call Christopher Rice's coming of age murder mystery bold, call it courageous, call it outrageous, but never accuse him of riding on his famous mother's name. Yes, he is the son of Anne Rice, the bestselling novelist, and Stan Rice, the poet. Christopher lives in New Orleans, where he grew up. "A Destiny of Souls" is his first novel, you may be sure it will not be his last. He is a 22-year-old with insights that belie his years.
The main players of the story are Stephen Conlin, shy, blond and different. At Cannon he elicits whispers, nudges and cruel pranks from even his best friends. He knows what others say about him. Knows the whispers are true.
Greg Darby plays football and is a master at hiding his secret self. He's a young man headed for tragedy. His best friend, Brandon Charbonnet, is also a football jock. He lives in the shadow of his older brother, Jordon, who was a star athlete at Cannon, winner of the Head Master's award and is now at Princeton. Brandon, unlike his brother, is possessed with a passion for violence.
Meredith Ducote is one of two freshmen girls to make the varsity cheerleading squad. She, like the other three, carries secrets in her heart. She becomes bulimic like her new friend Kate Duchamp. She also drinks large amounts of vodka from her mom's liquor cabinet and keeps a personal journal. Meredith is ashamed of herself and the others for how they treat Stephen, but what can she do? She goes with the flow, plays follow the leader, until. . .
When Stephen's three best friends abandon and brand him on his first day at Cannon, something dark uncurls inside him. He's gay -- hates it, but it is not something he can change.
Rice uses his four main characters to portray social and psychological issues among teenagers many might prefer to avoid. Some of the language may offend, as might the graphic sexuality of the story, but when the sun shines on truth it is hard to turn your eyes away. The unfolding story told is at once dark, bittersweet and enchanting.
I particularly enjoyed how Rice used his flashbacks into the lives of the parents of these young people. We are given a bird's eye view of who, what, when and how these youngsters were formed. Knowing this, we understand the "why" of all that transpires. In each of these trips into the past, the importance of values over wealth is emphasized.
If I were forced to compare mother and son (Anne and Christopher Rice), the only comparison I would make in their separate works is their use of place description. Christopher captures the haunting ambiance of "The Big Easy," from a youthful perspective. Still, he brings out all of the senses, all the mystique that is New Orleans, much like his mother. As for voice and style of the two, there is no comparison. Young Christopher's voice is crisp, clean and bears no resemblance to his mother's esoteric nuances. His characterizations are works of art.
A poem, I assume penned by the author, is used to good advantage throughout the story and it seems fitting to repeat it her to give readers a feeling for the demons faced by young and old alike.
"Fear cannot touch me. . .It can only taunt me, it cannot take me, just tell me where to go. . .I can either follow, or stay in my bed. . .I can hold on to the things that I know. . .The dead stay dead, they cannot walk. The shadows are darkness. And darkness can't talk."
In the end, readers may shed a tear for four kids on bicycles in their thirteenth summer, illuminated only in memory by a slanting sun, and now gone forever.
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Patricia Ann Jones is a published writer and literary critic.
COPYRIGHT NOVEMBER 27, 2000, PATRICIA A. JONES, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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