Imaginary childhood friends can certainly have a major impact on any child. Just ask Calvin Lloyd. His imaginary friend, Bellamy, had become over time his trusted confidant, mentor and sole protector to assist in weathering significant childhood perplexities and predicaments. Calvin's youthful plights include abusive manipulations and assaults from his stepmother, dating a person of color, forming a close clandestine relationship with a gay neighbor and the tragic and brutal murder of a boyhood friend.
Throughout the story, Bellamy councils Calvin to desist in becoming an easy mark for just about anyone out to do him harm. A loner by both circumstance and choice, Calvin finds solace in the forbidden friendship of a black girlfriend and a homosexual neighbor. To avoid certain rebuke, castigation and condemnation from both adults and friends, Calvin must keep these relationships clandestine and concealed.
The shocking murder of an innocent childhood companion sets the stage for a life-altering event for Calvin. Not only has he lost a close friend but blame for the dark deed has unfairly and prejudicially been leveled on Calvin's gay friend. The trial becomes nothing more than a farce and witch-hunt due to the anti-gay prejudices, preconceptions and bigotry of the time. While Calvin has the sole ability to serve as an unimpeachable witness to clear his friend, fear of community reprisal and retaliations hold him back from coming forward with the truth.
This whimsical coming-of-age chronicle captures the euphoria and hilarity of adolescence during the sheltered and naively innocent decades of the 60s and 70s in small town America. Calvin's humorous and poignant antics will escort the reader down memory lane laughing uproariously all the way.
The novel can best be described as Wonder Years and Leave It to Beavermeet Mad Magazine and Law and Order.
