REBEL POWERS by Richard Bausch

In many ways, this is a coming-of-age story, as 40-something Thomas reflects on the year he was 17.  Back in 1967, Thomas’s father Daniel, a decorated Vietnam War vet and former POW, finds himself incarcerated again after he is court-martialed for stealing a typewriter and writing bad checks.  During the agonizing trip west to relocate near the prison in Wyoming, Daniel’s wife Connie and their two children, Thomas and Lisa, meet two shady characters, Chummy Terpin and Penny Holt.  These two, whose story sounds like a con, seem to latch onto the family, and one of them resurfaces later in the novel.  Chummy and Penny make the assumption that Daniel is in prison for protesting the war, and although this myth couldn’t be farther from the truth, Connie does nothing to correct it.  I would say that the principal theme in this novel is humiliation.  Daniel obviously cannot rejoin the Air Force on his release and struggles to figure out what kind of life he is going to have and what his role in the family will be.  Connie’s father helps them out financially, but Connie finds his charity to be a necessary evil and a source of further humiliation.  Young daughter Lisa just wants to go home, but for now home is a boarding house, and the entrance to their quarters has no door.  If anyone needs privacy, this family does, but it’s a luxury they simply can’t afford.  The fulcrum that the whole novel teeters on is a conversation in which Thomas overhears his mother express doubts about the future of her marriage.  This uncertainty makes for a very wobbly foundation for Thomas as he crosses the threshold into adulthood, ready or not.