STEEL VALLEY

Madden’s novel celebrates the Ohio River Valley in the 1960s and follows the intersecting lives of two young locals as they grow into adulthood.

Steubenville and Mingo Junction, Ohio, are towns dominated by Wheeling Steel. Jack Clark is the oldest child in a large, loving Irish Catholic family; his father, Tom, tried to escape Steubenville, but fate brought him back home and he took a job in the steel mill. Laurie Carmine’s Italian family is more well-to-do; her father took advantage of the G.I. Bill and became a doctor. The Clarks live right on the river; the Carmines live well away from it. However, Jack and Carmine meet in seventh grade in parochial school; shy Jack is smitten with Laurie right off the bat. The narrative tells their stories, but especially Jack’s: his school friends and his doubts, his striving in high school sports (a very big deal), and his dreams for the future. A keen sense of time and place is present, featuring such elements as the songs that the teens danced to; Jack’s first car, a Plymouth Valiant; the Vietnam War; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963; and the 1968 spring that claimed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and any innocence America had left. Do Jack and Laurie finally triumph as their love grows and deepens? To Madden’s credit, he keeps readers guessing in that regard; Jack goes missing in action in Vietnam, Laurie marries someone else, and that’s just for starters. A disclaimer tries to separate history from fiction, but it also notes that Jack’s life shares strong similarities with Madden’s. The book gets off to an awkwardly expository start with a scene of Laurie’s father laying out the whole Carmine family history at their Thanksgiving dinner. Soon, however, the story takes over and gingerly coexists with bits of local lore that the author seems proud to include, along with uncredited black-and-white photographs of various locations mentioned in the book, as well as footnotes.

A debut novel of the ’60s that becomes more engaging as the pages turn.