"This is an appealing coming-of-age story about a troubled young man. ...
Platt's fifth novel is emotionally powerful and skillfully crafted."
--Library Journal
Platt's fifth novel takes place in 1944, toward the end of the Second World War, but far away from the action. Ian McKenzie, a bright fifteen-year-old street kid ready to take anyone on, has been sent to a Puget Sound summer camp to be straightened out. Andy Ackerman, the counselor assigned to the camp's charity cases, is a young man fresh from the war in the Pacific, angry, demanding, unorthodox.
Ian and his cabin of outcasts spend the summer building a chimney and fireplace for the camp's lodge, while all the other kids are out playing games and singing 'round the campfire. Through Ackerman's tough love and the sharing of a strenuous task, Ian learns to solve problems, from finding and unearthing rocks for the chimney to finding a way to get along with a street kid from a rival neighborhood. He gains pride and a sense of honor and, as Ackerman unveils his dark secrets, Ian learns to cope with fears and responsibilities he's never imagined. Most important, he learns how to care for someone else and to care about his own life. It is Ackerman's values and Ackerman's tragedy that form the cornerstone of Ian's life and make this novel something truly special and moving. This coming-of-age story is framed by Ian's return to the camp fifty years later, as a naval admiral, and his eventual discovery of Ackerman's final secret.
$21.95 cloth, 224 pp., ISBN 0-945774-40-0.
Order from your local bookstore via Book Sense
Click here to read the first chapter of The Cornerstone
or just read a short excerpt from later in the novel, below.
Excerpt from The Cornerstone
Curt looked at Ian, then looked over to Ackerman and recited, "We hunted and dug all 'round the clock, till finally we found it."
Then the four in unison, "So here's your damn rock!"
Each boy took a corner of the tarp and slowly walked forward . . . pause, step, pause, step.
Inch by inch, the cornerstone was revealed. The boys kept watch on Ackerman's face. By the time the prize was totally exposed, that face had gone virtually blank with astonishment. Ackerman stood up and, for the first time Ian had ever noticed, let his cigarette drop from his fingers.
The boys ran back to the bed of the truck, faces alight with pride. Ackerman picked his way down the rock pile, the chimney-in-waiting, and walked over to the cornerstone as though it were indeed the Holy Grail surrendered unto him.
He ran his hands over it with trembling tenderness, studying its magnificence.
Ian's heart raced with the excitement of the moment . . . how strange that one huge piece of cold stone could produce such awe on the face of a man and, at the same time, produce such a feeling of accomplishment in himself. Ian looked at Ackerman again. In the shadows of the late afternoon, his face appeared drawn and sallow. Blood had come through the bandage on his forehead, and Ian noticed how his long, delicate fingers shook as he lightly touched the cornerstone, inspecting its perfection, like a blind person touching a surface in order to see it.
Ian could tell just by looking at Freddy and G'Nat's faces that they were busting to tell Ackerman of their Olympia adventure. But, as they had all agreed, they kept their four- cornered secret.
As though reading Ian's fearful mind, Ackerman looked at his SOK's and said, "Y'all gotta promise me one thing: Don't ever tell me where y'all got it. They don't grow like this natural." Then he turned to Ian and said, "I'm obliged, son. Mighty obliged. I could lay me down, die tomorrow, and enter Fiddlers Green a happy man."
"Fiddlers what?" G'Nat asked.
"That's jest sailor talk for Paradise," Ackerman replied as he found his cigarette and began puffing it back to life.
Ackerman pulled a wadded-up measuring tape out of his pants pocket and proceeded to measure the cornerstone.
"Three feet, seven. One foot, five and one-quarter inches exact," he announced. "Yessir, a little speck of perfection. I'm obliged."
Ian didn't think Ackerman had been obliged to very many people in his life, but his green eyes were reflecting an honest gratitude.
"It's only a friggin' rock," Ian said, shifting his glance toward the cove.
"Time will tell, time will tell," Ackerman said. This time the corners of his mouth edged up ever so slightly.
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