Twelve-year-old Jack Witcher knows that he doesn’t fit in – into his neighborhood, his school, and most painfully, into his family. It’s the mid-1960s and his carousing father is out of a job (again), and his mother is dressing like something other than a mother in order to get a job at the corner store. Worst of all, his older brother is a pot-smoking bully who revels in the fist fights and mouthy bravado that their father engages in with the men who live one neighborhood over.
Jack sums up his place in the community with brutal honesty: “My father was unemployed and my mother was known for being ugly. Kids in the neighborhood spat my name rather than said it. They didn’t even grant me the compliment of a rude nickname. One of the first things newcomers learned when they moved in was, ‘It’s a nice neighborhood, too bad the Witchers live here.’”
When their dad challenges a prominent man to a fight, Jack knows that his isolation is complete and that any chance he has ever had for happiness is over. The man is the father of the girl of his dreams; the only person who has ever recognized his good heart, his intellect and his dissimilarity to the other members of his family.
Friendship and confidentiality appear in the unlikely form of a portly, smarmy, but kind-hearted jeweler whose shop is around the corner from his mother’s store. Together the old shop owner and Jack scheme to get Jack the attention of his love interest – and Jack’s renewed confidence and wish for magic are formulated. Writes author Stephen Wetta of their scheme: “He whispered a syllable into my ear, an incantation he had devised. I was not to divulge the syllable. Ever. To anyone. I was forbidden to utter it aloud. Doing so would bring me harm. Wonderful things will come to those who respect the power of words, he told me.”
And the plan works. An awkward, clandestine and forbidden friendship begins with lovely Myra, with the exchange of an invaluable 50-cent ring from Mr. Gladstein’s jewelry case.
And then Myra’s brother disappears. With suspicions of his own, Jack tries to navigate the story his brother has told, and tries to get its ill-fitting pieces to form the picture he wants to see. On his own once again, Jack realizes his future is up to him and that the baggage of his family is not for him to carry.
Drawing from a personal history that closely resembles Jack Witcher’s – but more that of Jack’s father’s and brother’s – author Stephen Wetta offers hope for the rejected and pleas for acceptance as well in his first novel, with the thought that being like everyone else is to be disingenuous. As much as we may know this, the story of Jack Witcher is worth reading as a reminder.