Dewey Defeats Truman

Two things in particular set this novel apart. One is Thomas Mallon's acute eye for detail -- both in terms of conveying a very particular milieu and in finding behavioral nuances that reveal so much about the characters. The second is the author's genrosity of spirit and humaneness. He has created richly-detailed people in this book, all of whom are recognizable and utterly believable. Despite their flaws, these are characters we truly do care about. Mallon's tone is one of wry, non-judgmental sagaciousness. A lovely novel, highly recommended.

The description of the town was so detailed and I identified strongly with the characters even though I had never heard of Owosso and the story took place 20 years before I was born.Owosso was located only 1-1/2 hours from our home in Detroit, so we decided to check it out. We drove into town and I immediately fell in love with the whole area (which hasn't actually changed much). We moved her three years ago and I have no regrets.

Thomas Dewey, the people of his hometown, Owosso, Michigan, and the reader all come in for surprises as this entertaining read moves through its fast-paced pages. Mallon has done his historical research on the time and the town well, and, among the numerous narrator points of view, has created some memorable characters, most of whom stand slightly off-center from the main love triangle. A few never take on more than a single dimension, particularly the striver teenager Billy Grimes. And the deep dark secret that drives much of the novel's action hardly seems momentous after fifty years, let alone shocking if it were to be revealed. But those are small quibbles for the opportunity to spent novel time with the cantankerous Horace Sinclair, the apparently shallow neophyte politician Peter Cox, the forever grieving mother Jane Herrick, her trapped son Tim, and the high school teacher Frank Sherwood who introduces them through his telescope to Jupiter while carefully keeping his own world hidden from all. Because Mallon succeeds in making both the characters and the time affecting, the upbeat ending for nearly everyone is a pleasure. Sure, it's not a happy ever after assurance that Mallon delivers as the country careens toward the second half of the 20th century, but he has skillfully brought each character around to the opportunity to live a chosen, rather than prescribed, life, and therein lies much of the considerable satisfaction this novel gives.

This is the second novel by Thomas Mallon I have read (the other being HENRY AND CLARA), and in both books Mallon excels at finding the right detail to open up a character or a scene more fully for the reader. In a scene in a hospital waiting room, Anne Macmurray wishes to indicate to her fiance to leave so that she can comfort a teenage boy who she senses wants to cry but won't in the presence of the older man. Mallon writes that Anne attempts a telepathic sort of glance at her fiance, "like a test of the Emergency Broadcast System," and he does take the hint. The detail both evokes the period in which the book is set and also shows how Anne is slowly satisfying herself that she has made the right choice after all in her finace. The novel is filled with small moments like this, all of them well selected and all of them reminding us of the humanity of the characters. (If I had the book with me here at work, I could add another good example, but that is one I remember from savoring this book in January.