A novel portraying the year in Canadian society after WW II. It is V.E. Day in Hamilton. The narrator runs into his ice hockey hero before the war and introduces him to Hamilton society with romantic consequences. "It gives the reader insight into the maturing process through the first person narrative of law student Tom Davis as he gropes his way to adulthood during the years immediately following the end of the Second World War. The book also bears witness to the unchanging nature of human frailty and the complexities of love, lust and hate." Brantford Expositor.
"A good read... funny and sad, just like life itself, as it traces the tale of young love...when everything seemed so different, yet things weren't really different".. Stony Creek News.
Genre: FICTION / Coming of Age
out of print
It was so dark I couldn't see much. I felt rocks under my hands, panicked for air, and kicked for the surface. On the shore, I saw the two girls holding on to each other. Tim was running to follow us in. Skip wasn't anywhere. I went under and swam in another direction, reaching out at every looming form, scraping the skin from my fingers. I made one last wide arm swing on my way up for breath, and, when I looked at the shore and saw no Cathy, I felt how hopeless were my unsystematic plunges. I then began to measure where she might have landed after her dive and to where her motion might have carried her. I struck rocks with my feet and ducked under, feeling my way down their sides into the cold water of a hole into which I had fallen and from where I could feel a freshness rising against me as I pushed myself deeper clutching at one ledge after another. A movement nearby made a slight impact on me, and I looked up to see a black shape disappearing into the flannel dark gray. I went deeper, seeing nothing and feeling only clammy sharp stone. When I got up to the surface I was desperate. I wanted to yell for Skip. But when I looked at shore the girls were gone, but people were struggling in the water near the bank. At the same time my heart leaped, my arms struck out. I reached them as Tim took Cathy from Skip and lifted her onto the rocks. I clambered up the side and grabbed onto Skip's arm. He was weak from exhaustion. The girls helped Tim carry Cathy to the top where they knelt beside her, rubbing her limbs. When Skip and I stumbled to them, I heard him catch at a second wind.
"Get down!" he ordered me.
