Jim Black

The story, as told by the narrator as he looks back over thirty years to his childhood, more specifically the year in the 1960s when he was thirteen, is set in Archer City, a small town in America. That was the year the young Jim Black met and befriended Sam, an ageing black American, a decent and wise old man. Their friendships started as they were both fishing and grew from that with many discussions about fishing, baseball and life.

Jim also tells of the many escapades he and his two close friends, Gary Beesinger and Charles Luig, playing practical jokes and making their own adventures. Gary and Charles are initially wary of Sam but are eventually won round by Jim, but there are still those townsfolk who disapprove of the friendship, and along with Sam's account of his past we are aware of the prejudices of the time, but not in such a way that this takes over the story, it is just how things were.

River Season is a beautiful and gentle story of a time when three young boys could make their own entertainment, get up to mischief without getting into trouble and yet at the same time to perform acts of great kindness. Jim becomes very attached to Sam, who in turn thinks the world of Jim; and Jim's friendship with his two pals Gary and Charles is something to be admired.

While this is presented as a novel, it is in fact largely autobiographical, a story where the names have NOT been changed - the story having first been self-published and circulated among the author's friends. As word of the book got out, the book was enlarged and published but still keeping the real names of the characters.

What it amounts to is a most appealing account, the numerous chapters are very short making it a very easy read, there is not great drama or plot, although sad things do happen, there is also a tough of mystery or rather the unexplained, but as with other aspects of the story there is no great emphasis on this - it all adds to the atmosphere of a more peaceful, less hectic era.… (més)