24 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE OCTOBER 13, 1995

The One Thing You Can Do

After You've Done Everything

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BOOKS

Quietly moving novel returns

to a small-town childhood

Amnesty

by Louise A. Blum

Alyson, $19.95 hardcover

Reviewed by April Hunt

It's 1995 and by now, everyone-gay or straight-seems to grasp that silence equals death.

But in her debut novel, Chardon native Louise Blum makes silence the unlikely enemy that gradually chips away at a small-town family.

Maura Jaeger is grappling with grade school and an unstable family when the Vietnam War comes calling for her older brothers. Strong Zach, the father's favorite, flees for Canada. Then Maura's beloved Colin, trying to appease the father, exchanges his college catalogues for a tour with the Marines.

Now an adult, Maura is fighting to forget these actions and their consequences, along with the rest of her childhood, in a family that later banishes her for her lesbianism.

But when her father dies, Maura must leave the Pennsylvania hills where she is hiding and return to the small town where she grew up. There she is forced to face up to the memories: sensitive Colin's transformation in Vietnam, the lovers who left her in their wake, and the family that has defined much of who she is.

Louise A. Blum

The story is typical of many coming-of-age novels, but Blum's strong and moving characters take what could have been cliché to another level.

Yes, people die, and there aren't happy endings all around. Still,

Blum's quietly powerful prose paints Maura's world with strong, sure strokes. And despite darker moments throughout the novel, Blum is adept at showing the humor that surrounds so much of life. Blum admits some of the novel's obser-

Louise A. Blum

vations and content are linked with her life. Like her protagonist, she is an English professor at a rural university who has experienced life primarily through small towns.

Now a professor at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, Blum calls on her experience of growing up in Chardon, a town of 4,400 east of Cleveland, and attending the College of Wooster to craft rich scenes about rural life. Peppered among those are also wry comments:

"There is too much attention in a small town. Undivided attention and not enough people to divide it among. People invariably get more than their fair share."

Blum never shies away from showing the consequences that Maura and those she loves must endure because of the silence. But despite the stranglehold silence has had over her life, Maura eventually learns to grant herself amnesty, which includes confronting her attraction to a female student.

Amnesty is a bittersweet and quiet novel that will quickly draw you in. And you'll likely find yourself thinking about the silences in your life.

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