I Carried You on Eagles' Wings

Lothrop Lee & Shepard, October 1991. First American. Hardcover. Collectible Very Good/Very Good. 1st American Edition / 1st Printing (Lothrop - 1991) No marks noted in text. Binding is tight and square. Gently read. . . . . . . Grade 7-10-- Tony's mother has been slowly and painfully dying from multiple sclerosis since he was a child. Her illness is only part of his life, however; school, soccer (football), friends, and a wonderful girl occupy his time. He's also trying to understand why God would make his mother's life so tragic, why his father seems so cold and silent, and why terrific Clare wastes her time with him. Saving an injured herring gull with a broken wing and having his own ankle in a cast from a sports injury give him insight into the lives of those, like his parents, who live in cages and can't soar like the eagle in his mother's favorite biblical quote. After seeing his father and grandmother's sadness following his mother's death and the triumph of his gull's first flight, Tony begins to make room for his father's love, his girlfriend's affection, and his own self-realization. All this is in too slim a book, and the exploration of these issues seems contrived and overdone. The metaphor of the eagle is hard to follow, and the title is a heavy-handed one. There is so much British slang that it catches readers up short and interrupts the narrative. The voices of the teenagers are often much too adult to ring true. Still, there is a tenderness here--wonderful descriptions of Tony ministering to his mother with affection and compassion, the growing relationship between the teens, and the revealing scene of love between father and son. It's also one of the very few YA novels that explores the question of religious doubt. A book for readers asking for a story to cry over. --Marjorie Lewis, Scarsdale Junior High School, NY Family-owned bookshop in Steubenville, Ohio: BookMarx Bookstore. Books shipped within 24 hours.