Description

This is an auction for THE LAMENTS by George Hagen.

"The Lament family has a secret. Will is not the jolly, glowing baby born to Julia and Howard in Rhodesia during the 1950s. He is the weak, transparent preemie abandoned by his distraught mother when she kidnapped the Lament infant from the maternity ward. When the woman and child die in an automobile accident, the attending physician persuades the stunned Laments to pretend the abandoned child is theirs, and take him home. For the Laments, home is more a goal than a place. Soon Will, his younger twin brothers, and his parents begin a series of disastrous moves. Idealistic and impractical engineer Howard longs for a career that will make full use of his inventive genius. Artistic, progressive Julia wants a perfect community. Leaving a prosperous situation in Rhodesia, the family follows Howard as he accepts ultimately unsatisfactory jobs around the world. Will minds the uprooting more than the others do as the family moves from Africa to Bahrain to England to the U.S., and his struggle to make a place for himself is complicated by the family's downward economic spiral. Since much of the focus of the story is on hormone-driven teenage boys, the language and situations are often crude and sexually oriented. Despite a surprising number of bizarre tragedies, the book is full of humor, and the gradual development of the characters leads to a plausible and satisfying conclusion."