The Book of Famous Iowans

By Douglas Bauer
Henry Holt, $25

ISBN 0805043004

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Review by Laura Wexler

The Book of Famous Iowans begins as the narrator, Will Vaughn, returns to the family farm in New Holland, Iowa, for his father's funeral. The occasion of the funeral prompts Will, a Chicago magazine writer, to review his past in memoir form in an effort to make some sense of the event that forever changed his parents' and his own life: his mother's affair and eventual desertion.

Though the novel begins slowly with several chapters devoted to character sketches and background information, once it settles into Will-the-child's voice describing life on his family's farm in the 1950s, it's engaging and beautifully written. Bauer skillfully contrasts Will's idolatry of New Holland's town baseball hero, Bobby Markum, with Will's bewilderment at his mother's affair with Markum. He also contrasts Will's parents -- his beautiful mother, a former bar singer, and his staid father, who brought his young wife home to the farm out of necessity -- and in doing so, shows Will's constant conflict and confusion. With whom do his loyalties lie? What is the right way to live -- to stay or go, to play it safe or take risks, to face up to responsibility or flee?

The actual events of Will's past -- his father's discovery of his mother's affair, followed by a drunken confrontation at the town's baseball diamond, followed by tense days of waiting to see what will become of the family -- are so interesting that phrases like "in memory," which frequently pop up in the novel, threaten to break the spell. In fact, the faux-memoir device Bauer uses to tell the story is useful only to add to the sense that Will, and the reader, are searching for a truth that often lies beneath the surface of events.

Bauer's book is ultimately a story about loss of innocence, about the confusion that comes from growing older, a difference Will-the-child notices in his switch from cowboy worship to baseball fascination. It's also, ultimately, a novel about the sense of betrayal a boy, and now a man, feels when his mother leaves him.

Laura Wexler's work has been published in "Utne Reader" and "Doubletake."

©1997, ProMotion, inc.

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