My New Life By Ron Molen Signature Books (Salt Lake City), 1996. 235 pages. ISBN: 1-56085-073-6 Suggested retail price: $14.95 (US)
Reviewed by: Dave Combe

I   L O V E D   this book.

Set in 1936 Indiana, the narrator tells us of his "new life": a new life that begins in his seventh year as he comes to understand that there is a new world out there, out of the yard, and parental view. Covering a summer, the school year and the following summer, Tom (renamed Wart by the neighborhood leader) tells of of his newly discovered life; that childhood is wonderous, glorious and dangerous.

Oddly, what this book did was bring to the forefront of my mind my own life. The wonderful "fort" that was really bushes that had overgrown a long-dry stream in the canyon below our house, making a maze of tunnels in which we played, believing that no one knew about it but us; the girl who could beat up any boy for blocks around; the kid who shocked us and secretly delighted us, because he stole cigarettes from his mother and smoked them.

And it made me a bit sad, that, though I was growing up twenty years later then Wart, I still had so many similar adventures. Our children have not had as many of these experiences; life today is too regulated by soccer and ballet and parents who work in different ways. Maybe in more rural areas, yes, but here in California, those wonderful places are now developments, or we parents have developed a sense of fear for our children that seemed less strong in my childhood days.

I was intrigued by how the church in Indiana was portrayed as well. The narrator is frankly bored by church, interested in the greater formality and ritual when he occasionally visits the churches of non-LDS relatives. (His father has left Utah, his mother is a convert.) Surprisingly, since the action begins when he is seven, and goes from one summer through a school year and through another summer, his baptism at eight goes unmentioned. Mormonism is sort of unreal to Tom, as far as mattering in day to day life. And when, in the second summer, the family goes back to Utah for a vacation, the family's sealing in the temple is seemingly sprung on the children; when they tell the tale to their friends, who repeat it to their parents, the family finds that there is some social penalty for their difference in their community.

But religion is not the focus, it rather marks or sets the limits for his _difference_ from his fellows. The focus is the wonders of discovery of new things which as we age become common, and thereafter unremarkable. But while it is happening, we are daily discovering life and experience anew. Would that we could all as adults maintain that sense. Ron Molen has, somehow. And in the process of his doing so, has brought to mind memories of that wonder back to me. I owe him big-time.

I recommend this book, without reservation. Read it, and read it again. I know that I will.

Dave
                     The future is here; it's just very unevenly
                                       distributed.                            
Dave Combe     
dcombe@rain.org
http://www.rain.org/~dcombe/dave.html