Till Tomorrow

Terrence O'Brien, O. B. to his friends, finds himself caught in the middle of a rigid social scene in John Donahue's TILL TOMORROW. In 1961 he moves with him family to the American military base in Meuse, France, near the site of a famous and bloody World War I battle. He soon meets "Cannonball" Wall, who explains the social structure among the young people at the base. There are two categories --- aces and deuces. The aces are the cool guys; the deuces are to be avoided at all costs. O. B., of course, longs to be an ace, but soon develops a friendship with a French boy named Claude. "Claude the Clod," as he is called by the base aces, lacks athletic ability, dresses in French styles that the Americans consider weird and tells corny jokes. But he is also kind to O. B., especially after O. B. fails to make the base's baseball team. Claude teaches the new arrival much about France --- and friendship. O. B. is a very honest narrator, sharing his feelings of disappointment, confusion, loneliness, fright, and happiness with the reader. It is easy to sympathize with him as he tries to fit in at the base, so far away from his old home in the United States. By the novel's end, O. B. and the reader seem almost as close as O. B. and his friends in France. Much of the book is built around baseball --- a game that O. B. desperately wants to be good at so that he can make the team. Donahue takes his narrator from the depths of disappointment at an embarrassing tryout to the height of victory later in the book. Along the way, baseball practice provides a fine scene for O. B. and his father, a man with lots of responsibility who also always finds a way to spend important time with his wife and son. Donahue does a fine job writing about adult characters like O. B.'s father and Claude's grandfather as well as about the young people. The threat of war provides much of the book's late tension, but Donahue never loses track of his primary story --- the development of lasting friendships. TILL TOMORROW is an enjoyable tale of boys learning that there is more to friendship than being cool. --- Reviewed by Rob Cline ([email protected])