IF IT DOESN'T KILL YOU

When Ben’s father went to Willamette View, where Ben is starting as a freshman, he was a killer quarterback. Ben, also a talented football player, has always been proud to be a chip off the old block, until the day his father announces he is gay and moves in with his lover. Deeply ashamed, Ben does his best to keep his father’s new life a secret, especially from his tough- talking, hyper-masculine fellow athletes. As Ben struggles to act cool and be one of the guys, he learns that no one is immune from social pressure and that most of his contemporaries posture and pretend. The characters, while sympathetic and understandable, aren’t emotionally involving, and the ending—Ben gets emergency help from his father’s lover and realizes that he still cares for his father—is too pat. Bechard (My Mom Married the Principal, 1998, etc.) is particularly good with dialogue; her characters’ off-center, awkward conversations reveal a lot, while sounding clumsily authentic. (Fiction. 12-14)