Book Review: Holding True

Book Review: Holding True

Author: Jill Penrod

Date: 2016

Publisher: Jill Penrod

Quote: "That's my name. True Fischer."

When his parents were newlyweds True's father marvelled, "Is it true? You're pregnant?" and his mother was so amused by that that she named the baby True. True's father later sustained some brain damage; he stutters badly and is prone to seizures. True himself doesn't seem less intelligent than most boys in their late teens, but admittedly that's not saying much. When True falls off the diving board at the pool he blathers as if he's trying to have a brain injury to be like his Dad, but of course that's not his real problem. 

True does some of the dumb kid things he does because he has a real problem. He and his best high school friend were molested by a coach. His friend then died in an accident. The coach has warned him that, if True warns other kids or parents about the coach, the coach can make it look as if True was to blame. 

True has a year of high school left but he helps his parents maintain the apartment buildings they rent out mostly to college students. In this vulnerable summer, he meets some college students who are just his age; what we used to call summer children, "special," "gifted and talented," students offered the chance to take a few freshman courses on the college campus in the summer after or even before grade twelve, without having to be admitted to the college as regular students. As when colleges offer free online courses to anybody, even people who register in the names of their dogs...the stated goal may be to test different teaching methods or just qualify for some sort of government grant, but no points for guessing, the colleges want a lot of these people to register as full-time, full-tuition-paying students next year, ("Summer children" usually got reduced tuition, subsidized by their high schools; at some colleges they may also be subsidized by the State.) 

Summer children aren't supposed to date regular college students; they are, typically, too young to do most of the things college students, typically, want to do on weekends. They don't usually get even student labor jobs. They're supposed to be just adjusting to classes where they really need to study things on their own, instead of having everything read to them by the teacher. A few of them manage to like other summer children to whom they feel attracted. The stereotype used to be that they always formed hopeless crushes on regular college students who either didn't notice them or thought of them as, well, children.

True is not particularly attracted to a couple of cute, blonde, flirty summer girls he calls "the Barbies," whose role in the story is to be all that he and his friends don't want to become, but he is attracted to another pair, Jemma and Aubrey. They have their own teen problems, of course; all eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds are, at best, works in progress. Aubrey has food allergies that haven't even been fully identified yet, which means the primary sensitivity is probably to chemicals whose manufacturers have really leaned on doctors not to test patients for reactions to them, and goes into anaphylactic shock at a party. Jemma has been brought up with "good student" as her primary identity, lets herself be baited into talking as if she thinks everyone else is stupid, and has an emotional crisis when she gets a D on an essay test. 

This is an age-appropriate teen romance: While coping with their teen problems as Christians, True and Jemma slowly reach the point of declaring themselves friends. But it's also a Christian novel: their primary emotional bonds are still with their parents.

As readers can expect from Jill Penrod, this is a thoughtful story where kids face situations beyond the usual cliches of sex (and maybe drugs) with more than the usual level of insight. The characters are believable as eighteen-year-olds, which means they're not easy to like, but they are well written and sympathetic enough that you'll want them to reach a believable happy end-of-this-volume. If you like reading about teenagers, and especially about the damage done to teenagers when people tell them they "are smart" instead of accepting that it's to be expected that their parents' children would have some academic talent, you will like this book. If you are an adult who needs to be reminded that most children have a reasonable amount of intelligence, that the ones whose talents involve writing or math don't need to be made to feel like freaks, that the ones who don't seem to have talents may be coping with things you can't even imagine, and that nothing good comes from telling children they "are smart" if they earn good grads, you need this book.