StevenssInID

The adolescent protagonist of this novel is the youngest member of the Stevens family, Charles Mallison, Jr. - or Chick. He steps into the roles of detective and crusader that previously he had watched his Uncle Gavin play, and here his quest initially takes him away from home, toward a new counter-cultural family and a reckoning with his southern conditioning. In the novel's second half, however, Uncle Gavin and his voice take over the narrative, and at the end Chick rides home with his uncle and mother in the family car. The book's most powerful family drama, as in the Knight's Gambit stories, occurs essentially outside the narrative, and involves fratricide and a poor white father whose parental rage and grief acquire an almost tragic stature.