Uncle Ronald

May 1, 1997
Gr 6-8-At age 112, Mickey McGuire is Canada's oldest citizen, but he remembers with perfect clarity the events beginning in Ottawa in 1895. That year, without investigating the cause of his daily fainting spells, school authorities decide that 12-year-old Mickey should stay home. When his bed wetting begins, the boy's efforts to cure the problem ring with both hilarity and pathos. A larger concern is the frequent beatings he and his mother receive at the hands of his alcoholic father. Determined to spare her son further trauma, Mickey's mother sends him to stay on her family's farm run by her brother and twin sisters. Strong and tender, Uncle Ronald is wise in the ways of horses, geese, and men, and is the antithesis of the boy's brutal father. When Mickey's mother arrives after a particularly savage beating, she is sure that her husband will follow. Meanwhile, the entire rural area is also braced for violence. Armed federal troops have arrived to collect back taxes that no one can pay. Mickey's mother's cousins, the legendary O'Malley girls, are stalwart and shrewd in subverting their efforts. Doyle has a wonderful grasp of time and place. His unique storytelling voice weaves sound, sight, and disparate plot elements together into an unusual whole. With warmer, better-drawn characters and a more carefully couched theme than Doyle's Angel Square (Groundwood, 1996), this book will reward and amuse thoughtful readers.-Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY