Novels set in the near past involving the political extremes we have lived through can be very intriguing. When the book is a bucolic that turns into a mystery, then into a thriller, then into a polemic and then back into a bucolic, scraping the family saga genre on the way, it's a lot to take in all at one reading. Difficult, that is, unless it's so well crafted that it simply drags you along from format to format until you can't keep from picking it back up to find out which book you're reading with the same gusto you put into following the storyline.

Robert Crooke's "American Family" is such a book. It begins with a sweetly reminiscent sensibility and without too much warning begins

Tom is at the point in a young man's life when romance, sex, politics, morality and the rest of the adolescent mix begin to confuse the heretofore important issues of school and family. He finds himself with a girlfriend, the daughter of a wealthy and important man who, it turns out, is his father's enemy and possibly even the plotter of the elder Gannon's disappearance and probable death. Tom becomes more and more involved with the men who people his neighborhood and his world. He becomes the center of an intrigue that includes the death of a corrupt politician, the corruption of a young woman and accidental breakdown of his entire family structure. Tom becomes a man long before he finishes his boyhood and that is the central thread of this novel.

This loss of innocence is handled delicately and brilliantly through small conversions in Tom's belief system. His sister Liz is a perfect foil for him, an excellent sounding board and critic, a near-perfect accomplice in the crimes he commits to protect the innocent around him. He is a Hudson River Robin Hood without a clear purpose until he is able to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of race discrimination in Harlem and in New York City governmental policies, the McCarthy vs. the Army trials and the communist witch hunts of the 1950s. What he witnesses and what he experiences help create the man he becomes.

The end of the novel, not surprisingly, weaves together threads that have been loosely woven throughout the book, presenting an almost too perfect piece of cloth. The only reason this works, in this instance, is the quality of the prose that precedes the final chapter. Crooke leaves his flow, and summarizes with style and efficiency, even creating the extra tear in the eye of the reader. It's very well done.

There are memorable characters throughout the work, good and bad men, valiant women and even cameo appearances by the famous, like Paul Robeson. A black developer and lawyer, Arthur Spencer, plays a most important role in the book, first as Tom's father's client and friend, then as an ally with Tom and Liz in their eager pursuit of evil in the Hudson River communities they inhabit. The Stannard family and a wife-beating, child-beating Senator encompass the enemy, men who would, on the surface, appear to be very much on the right side of the law but who, in reality, are the enemy beneath the surface of things. All these characters are realistically and honestly drawn by Crooke.

From the dedication on the third page of the novel, "This book is for my father and my son" one wonders if, indeed, there is more than merely fiction on these pages. Clearly the times are real and many of the trappings of the story are true to the time portrayed. Knowing nothing of the author and his own history, the assumption might be drawn that this book is as much a confessional as it is a fiction. On the other hand, he may equally be considered a novelist with a strong understanding of the human race in its frailty and its convictions, with an equally strong and compelling pile of research and a neatly tuned pitchfork which resonates reality.

This is the best summer read I've had in years. The book is highly recommended.