First Tiger

The troubled protagonist of this intelligent, straightforward coming-of-age story is 16-year-old Jake Paine, the only son of a depressive and lithium-dependent Vietnam vet. Jake's life was fundamentally changed when, at age six, he witnessed his mother's death in a car accident. Although his father remarries and has another child, the father is never able to regain his center, and Jake himself, unwelcome in the new family, becomes a petty thief and troublemaker. Threatened with being sent away, Jake escapes to New York City, where he lives on the streets. But he becomes an unlikely hero when he protects a mentally unstable woman from an attack in the subway. The incident results in his simultaneous discovery by a writer who wants to tell his story, and by authorities, who want him out of their jurisdiction. Jake is quickly returned to his hometown of New Hope, Pa., where he falls easily into his old patterns, though now he is interviewed periodically by the writer, a young woman who fascinates Jake as much as he fascinates her. Meanwhile, his father sinks deeper into depression, reading obsessively and freeing animals from a pet store, proving his own dictum, ""Going from order to disorder is always easy in this world [but] going from disorder to order is impossible."" A sudden but seemingly unavoidable tragedy forces the family to finally drop its pretenses and split up. Harrar's realistic and gritty debut novel doesn't sugarcoat the life of a misunderstood boy, but neither does it deny Jake the possibility of redemption. Harrar keenly describes not only Jake's limited options, but also his unquenched hopes for a better life. (Nov.)