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K.O. Me, I’m Irish
The Sweet Summer
by William Kelley
Westminster John Knox Press, 2000
Reviewed by John Leech
In 1947 Harry S Truman signed the United States Air Forces into being. Walter J. Boyne and Steven L. Thompson ably traced a dozen possible USAF careers in their novel The Wild Blue. They left out airman Cully Madden.
Cully is a fighting Irishman. As the novel opens, he is in training in southern Illinois. He throws a good right, and this lands him on the nascent service wing's boxing team. But for him, all its members are black.
Its manager, Master Sergeant Washington, is well connected with fight promoters throughout the South, all the way down river to New Orleans. Cully proves his mettle, and he's on the card. The team piles into a couple of sedans for a summer's tour of pickup boxing matches, preparatory to meeting the Marines' team.
They fight in a variety of venues for a variety of prizes. Sometimes they're in a ring, or a hall, sometimes they're on a boat, or in a barn out in the canebrake. They are not always in tall cotton; a climactic fight ends dirtily.
Our hero learns to fight, and he learns to love his fellows as men, and as black men. He is proud of them, but this is no "Soldier's Story."
The Sweet Summer is a cinematic story, by a cinematic author (Kelley is perhaps best known for his screenplay for “Witness”). It has the scenes, the set pieces, the broadly written characters, and the picturesque dialogue of a motion picture. The Irishman is plucky, honest, and triumphant; the girl sweet, unattainable, and won. The men are almost too good to be true; and the songs they sing are all available on record.
Westminster Press long ago published Escape from Witch Mountain; this may join it among their movie-rights sales -- if the soul of Ralph Macchio ("Crossroads") is reborn in the body of David Caruso ("NYPD Blue").
John Leech is a writer and editor. Born in Marin, he grew up and was educated in Belmont, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley, and has worked in the book business and lay ministries. An avid reader of mysteries -- holy and genre -- he lives in the Valley of the Moon. Learn more about John at his website.
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