Barefoot at the Lake

April 15, 2015
Fogle's modest, episodic memoir recalls the summer of 1954 when he was 10, staying with his familyhis parents, older brother Rob, and his uncle Reubin their cottage on the shores of Lake Chemong, a hundred miles north of Toronto. Not much of moment happensthe boy finds a dead heron, his dog gets a noseful of porcupine quills, his uncle tells stories that are really parables, challenging the children to understand their lives and the world around thembut, still, things couldn't be much better, for, as Fogle puts it, sometimes, even when you're little, you know when life is perfect. But is it? There's a neighbor's bigotry and cruelty, his uncle's deep sadness over his wife's having left him, his brother's injury, but these prove to be anomalies, for at one point his uncle tells Bruce, When you're an adult and you think back to your summers here, all you'll remember are the good things. I promise you that. And, as this quiet memoir demonstrates, it's clearly a promise that has been kept.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)