Stephen Wetta's novel "If Jack's In Love" a powerful portrait of the perils of belonging to a town's outcast family

(Out 9/29/11, 368p, Putnam) A powerful story of a bright, Southern 13-year-old boy dealing with the burdens of being a member of the pariah family in a middle-class Virginian town in the late 1960s. The story is well written, although a little slow in pacing, as young Jack pines over a girl who’s a member of one of the upper-crust families, while having to deal with both his unemployed dad, who wants to rob the jewelry store of a man who’s befriended Jack and with his violent older brother, who abuses and threatens the older brother of young Jack’s crush. Jack pines over Myra, who returns his affection because he is the only one in their class at school who is as smart as she is, and that connection enables her to look past his family’s lower social standing. But when her older brother, Gaylord, goes missing, the whole town suspects if was Jack’s brother who did something to him, and that dooms young Jack’s relationship. The novel offers a wonderful portrait of the dilemmas of being an outcast and the perils of feeling threatened by one’s own family members. If you enjoy this book, I strongly recommend Dallas Hudgens’ Drive Like Hell, which offers a similar portrait of a young teenage boy coping with the challenges of being in a white trash family, although in a more comic vein.