Summers Run

He began his career in Hollywood at age eight as Lars in Wagon Train to Sunrise. Soon his reputation as “that cowboy kid” zoomed and the name, Nathean Summers, nearly became a household word in theaters and television serials. However, by the late 1960s, the film industry– convinced audiences wanted hip young actors depicting cops and car chases– dismissed Nathe as hard to cast. The Candle’s Wick, a baseball drama set in rural Kentucky, essentially became his last major film appearance. He took up a career in sports broadcasting only to have it nipped by nepotism. Summers then devoted nearly 20 years to publishing lifestyle magazines until the firm was scuttled by outsiders. In late 1991, he crated up his belongings, his career, and his future and returned to the family home in rural Pennsylvania. Jaundiced perhaps but wiser surely, he takes up life in the community he left nearly 40 years ago as a boy. He arrives, determined to restore the joy of living while hoping to patch the tatters of a boyhood he left behind. That next spring, Claude Kinkade and his mother Daisy arrive at a cousin’s farm, and Nathe finds himself becoming the surrogate father for young Claude whose army dad went missing in action in February of The Gulf War. Claude’s first person narrative, then, explores the developing relationship between Nathe searching for the joy of his lost boyhood and Claude, bereft of Blake Kinkade, the father he so earnestly yearns for at eleven years of age. As Claude and Nathe forge their relationship, Nathe’s memories of his film career, their mutual interest in baseball, and the poetry of flyfishing become the teachable moments they share . . . . Once there, Nathe stripped some line from his fly rod, then cast it with such grace and precision, even I was impressed, though I certainly knew little about throwing a fly line with finesse. How one starts the presentation behind one’s shoulder, then jets it, letting it arc over the water, then settle its lure on the surface as gently as thistle down lights on a spider’s web. I was watching something close to perfection. Something like an unhittable curve ball. Or, an effortless swing and contact driving the ball to the stands. “There’s been a plot brewing behind your back,” Nathe said, watching his fly intently and folding the line into his palm, ready to set the hook should there be a strike. “Aunt Marguerite’s the leader. Your Grandmother Beatrice. Even Albert Summers is definitely involved. Namely, now that the Kinkades have you in their clutches, they’re not going to let you go. You belong here in some way, where your dad was born and raised. I’m a-thinkin’ . . . Daisy knows this and will honor such. She knows you come from good stock.” He handed me the bamboo. With a light ripple now on the water, the rod felt like a long and living stem of Reed Canarygrass in my hand. The line, a string plucked from a harp vibrating, singing in harmony with the rod. Nathe slipped his hands over mine, like living gloves they were. “And she knows you will forever be Blake’s son as long as the sun sets and rises. “Just pull the line out and let it fall in wide ovals at your feet. Then point the tip of the rod flat, even with the water . . . hold the line taut–right about here–for just a second, bring the rod back and let the rod load and lift that line Back and Up and Over. Let it lift the line up high and fine, to where the clock says ‘two’, then bring it forward smoothly without a pause to where the clock says ‘ten’. Wrist stiff, elbow close to your side. “Then draw it back and let it load behind you and then flow ahead . . . let the rod take command of the line . . . load and flow . . . feed a little more line . . . two and ten . . . Load and Flow . . . Load and F-f-l-l-o-o-w-w . . . and let it light where you want it to go. And you’ve cast your first fly . . . just as your dad and I did over Summers Run back when we first learned together. . . . Anyone glances your way, Claude, and they know as Daisy knows, that this boy was seeded and rooted by Blake Kinkade.” Thus is voiced one of the major conflicts of Summers Run: An American Boyhood, namely, what to do with Claude. His mother Daisy is pursuing a singing career in Las Vegas and expects Claude will join her when everything’s in place. Claude, however, is bent on becoming a farm boy on the farmstead where his father was raised. The novel unfolds from today’s perspective and is based on twenty years' insight and reflection.