The Re-Appearance of Sam Webber

A white 11-year-old becomes fast friends with a black school janitor and learns about racism, loss, grief, forgiveness and the landscape of Baltimore in this heartfelt but simplistic debut novel, the first work of fiction from Bancroft Press. Narrator Sam Webber was shy and fearful even before his depressed father disappeared; now Sam lives near the poverty line with his mother, who works in a flower shop. At a low point in his life, Sam is taken under the wing of the kindly, wise school janitor. African-American WWII veteran Greely Clemons offers Sam fatherly advice and reels off stories about his own experiences. Sam's friendship with Greely sensitizes the boy to racial bigotry spouted by his mother's drawling boss, Ditch Gordon, and the class bully, fat, ugly Newt Novacek. Sam finds another father-surrogate in his mother's new boyfriend, but his leap toward emotional maturity comes when Greely, in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, confesses that he too walked out on his wife and kids back in Atlanta. Shaken, Sam finally realizes that the father he idolized may never return. Fuqua, who has written children's nonfiction (B&O: America's Railroad), seems to have envisioned this earnest tale as part tract on teenage depression and part coming-of-age novel. He has a sensitive understanding of the shaky emotional terrain of preadolescence, and he displays a good ear for dialogue and an intimate feel for Baltimore's rowhouses, creaky buses and broad sidewalks. Though teenagers may find Sam's story inspiring, adult readers may find it predictable and didactic. Agent, Robbie Hare. (Apr.)