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In 1963, Danny Prescott is an ordinary 16-year-old boy in Banning, Iowa, who is unaccustomed to being noticed by the likes of Brent Arrington, a star high school football player and the \u201cclosest thing Banning had to a celebrity.\u201d So Danny, who is also on the football team, is surprised when Brent asks him for a ride to the home of Loretta Tinsley, a 13-year-old girl in junior high. While there, Brent and Loretta disappear into a hay loft, where Brent rapes her and casually emerges unperturbed by her anguished cries, grotesquely satisfied by his conquest. Danny does nothing to help her and even gives Brent a ride back to town. Danny quickly becomes emotionally overwhelmed by his cowardly inaction, which finally leaves him \u201cshimmering with shame and humiliation,\u201d an ignominy sensitively depicted by Whipple. Loretta presses charges, and Brent is arrested for rape while Danny is considered an accessory to the assault. Danny desperately wants to atone for his part in Loretta\u2019s agony, especially after she attempts suicide, and tells the truth about what he saw. He even pines to testify against Brent. But Danny becomes the town pariah\u2014some hate him because he won\u2019t defend Brent, who makes a state football championship possible, and others because they see him as the star athlete\u2019s accomplice. The school\u2019s principal, Mr. Larson, tries to expel Danny, and local mothers take up a petition to remove him from school. Coach Esker discourages Danny from continuing to play football, and many of his teammates, Brent\u2019s \u201cloyalists,\u201d shun him. Even worse, Brent assaults him brutally and threatens to kill him if he doesn\u2019t keep his mouth shut. <\/p>\n
Whipple\u2019s moral drama is layered with complexity\u2014the Prescotts have a long and fraught relationship with the Arringtons. This is especially impressive given the ordinariness of this town\u2014Danny calls it a \u201cgrease spot on an Iowa map\u201d\u2014which serves as a perfect stage for the story, a small place that gives birth to big sins. At the heart of the novel is a delicately portrayed maturation of Danny\u2014this unassuming virgin who longs to escape the aching provinciality of his life is compelled to grow up fast and ask himself hard questions about what it means to be a man. Whipple\u2019s writing is generally poetically unembellished, but its plainness is the source of its gathering power, and it brings into sharp relief the averageness of those who participate in this moral contest. Here, Loretta\u2019s father, Evert, confronts Danny regarding his responsibility for her rape: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you help my little girl? They say you\u2019re a good kid. Why didn\u2019t you help her when she cried out?\u2026Why would someone she considered a friend\u2026bring a monster to our farm?\u201d This is an absorbing look into the ways even the most ordinary human beings can suddenly become key players in a terrible drama.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1963, Danny Prescott is an ordinary 16-year-old boy in Banning, Iowa, who is unaccustomed to being noticed by the likes of Brent Arrington, a star high school football player and the \u201cclosest thing Banning had to a celebrity.\u201d So Danny, who is also on the football team, is surprised when Brent asks him for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[47097],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-101494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-outcast"],"yoast_head":"\n