We’re still on track for an April release of The Smalltown Way, which I believe is going to appeal to smalltowners and city folks alike. There’s a lot going on in this one: a murder, a burglary, and some blatant skirting of residential electrical codes—and that’s just on the crime side. There’s also a hippie theater major trying to make sense of the world, a pastor described as the nicest man you could hope to meet, a reactionary right-wing radio host, a preacher of questionable credentials who turns an old candy store into a meeting place for bigots, and a local actor who’s losing his eyesight but doesn’t want to miss the chance to play God in a controversial new play.
There are kids on bikes, an old dog named Moe, and the dry-witted Betty Nolan, the proprietor of the Sweetpea Café who collects a dollar from anyone who drops an F-bomb and who later claims to have purchased a Lamborghini with the proceeds.
This novel most clearly illustrates my humanity-over-ideology philosophy. And there are some pretty good laughs in it.
But today I want to continue my review of my previous books in hopes that someone will say “I need to read this” or “I know someone who needs to read this” or “I’m going to share this post with my one million followers.” Today we’re looking at Trombone Answers, published in 2016.
A Little History
I hesitate even to use the term semi-autobiographical because to my knowledge I’ve never had a nervous breakdown (although I would say the nervous check-engine light has come on a few times).
Somewhere around 2003 I started writing what I envisioned as either a gigantic epic or a trilogy whose individual books would be gigantic divided by three. This semi-autobiographical tale would start with Parker Graham—fresh from a nervous breakdown—returning to his hometown of Colby City and reflecting on his life. I hesitate even to use the term semi-autobiographical because to my knowledge I’ve never had a nervous breakdown (although I would say the nervous check-engine light has come on a few times) and because I didn’t want anyone to get the idea that this was a memoir disguised as a novel. I’ll come back to that thought in a moment.
The trilogy idea wasn’t going anywhere despite hundreds of thousands of words being invested in it. It was unwieldy. Maudlin at times and self-righteous at others. There are some good passages that might still turn up somewhere but by and large it was all a little out of focus, mostly because of my decision to tell the story in flashback. It finally hit me that I was only going to get a handle on this story by taking it one chunk of time at a time.
I got to what I thought was a final draft that focused on Parker Graham’s six years in junior and senior high, told in chronological order. I passed it on to my friend and editor Brian Lynner, who suggested grouping some of the sections by theme because honestly, it was still bouncing around a bit. The published novel is indeed told in three themed sections: (1) Parker’s relationship with religion, (2) Parker’s relationship with his cousin and close friend Jamie Auxlander, and (3) Parker’s everyday life.
It's not the typical linear novel. Each of the three sections starts at the same place and progresses chronologically, so when you get to the second section you might be slightly jarred at the thought that hey, Parker was a senior at the end of the previous section but now he’s back in seventh grade. What I like about this approach is that now you have a sense of how Parker is going to act and react, based on what you’ve learned in the previous section(s).
So far Brian Lynner has never said to me “Dono, you doofus, that’s not what I was talking about at all.”
Hey, Weren’t You Going to Get Back to that One Thought in a Moment?
Ah. Yes. Trombone Answers is not a memoir and should not be interpreted as such although heck, you can interpret it any way you want to if the check clears. Yes, Parker Graham is based on me and yes, he played trombone and no, he was not a devil with the ladies. Just as in The Fraternity, there are real events with fictional outcomes. And even as fraught with uncertainty and shyness as he is, Parker grows and matures and opens his mind a little faster than I ever did.
Young Dono would not have had the self-awareness that Parker did in the scene where Angie Allen has convinced him to dance at Jamie’s wedding:
…she knew I needed a push, a push out of Colby City, a push away from deadly stodginess and the parent-pleasing groove I’d worn into my life.
The Title
The book was originally going to be called Trombone Answers to Bible Questions, but after I divided it into three parts that became the title of Section 1 and the truncated version seemed to apply pretty well to the whole thing. The phrase itself comes a scene where Parker’s girlfriend and fellow trombonist Stephanie Chance trusts him enough to reveal that she can no longer deny the fact that she’s gay. This comes as a surprise to Parker, whom we know to be a Christian though not necessarily one from the gung-ho camp. Stephanie asks Parker if he thinks she’s a bad person, and Parker replies “I know that’s a Bible question, but here’s a trombone answer: Of course not.”
What It’s About
It’s about six years (1972-78) in the life of a smalltown kid who writes mystery stories and plays baseball and falls in love frequently, a kid who’s probably old before his time. Told in first-person, the book is an episodic character study full of Parker Graham’s wry observations on life and love and friendships and marching band.
Main Characters
Parker Graham, who narrates his own story and lets the readers make their own judgments about whether he’s on the right path.
Joe Finley, the pragmatic complement to Parker’s romantic soul—and his longtime best friend.
Jamie Auxlander, Parker’s cousin, a little older and thus much more in tune with the ways of the world.
Mary Marchese, the English teacher who encourages Parker to keep writing. As the advisor to the school newspaper, she awakens a sense of compassion in Parker as he reports on the death of a hated classmate.
Angie Allen, Jamie’s friend, who sees something special in Parker but terrifies him with her directness.
Greg Carlyle, the band director who arrives at Colby Central determined to build a trophy-winning marching band program.
Laura Corman, a friend and classmate whom Parker never gets around to having a crush on—although he does ask her to the senior prom.
Favorite Passages
Parker Graham’s sexual education comes from a booklet called How to Tell Your Children About Sex, which his mother has slyly left in his room. He notes that the booklet devotes “entirely too many pages to zygotes to be enlightening or interesting reading,” and relies on conversations with Joe and Jamie to start connecting the dots. I love this passage, where Parker is sleeping over at Joe’s house and says that for the first time ever they had a frank talk about sex: “frank in the sense that we freely admitted what we didn’t know.” The conversation starts with a reference to their friend Chip Dexter, who embarrassed himself one day by stating his belief that there’s never a time when a girl isn’t menstruating.
“Honestly,” he said, “all I know is it’s once a month. But I don’t know if it lasts a day or a week or what. God, do you suppose Dexter’s brother told him that for a joke?”
“No idea. But what’s the purpose of it?”
“It has something to do with cleaning something out.”
“And what’s the Kotex for?”
“It helps in the cleaning-out process.”
“Why do we have to guess about this stuff?”
“Can you imagine my folks volunteering it? Or yours?”
“No. And can you imagine me asking?”
“No. I looked it up in the dictionary once, then I had to look up menses and I still didn’t know.”
“Yeah, the dictionary’s not all that helpful.”
“I got another one for you,” he said. “What’s soik sant noof?”
“Never heard of it. Does it have to do with periods?”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”
“Sounds Martian. Did you say soik?”
“Yeah. Soik sant noof. I was over at Foster’s last week and he had this Penthouse magazine his brother gave him.”
“Penthouse, yeah—that’s supposed to be pretty raunchy.”
“Yeah, they have this whole section where people write letters telling about stuff they’ve done. And this guy said he and his wife loved to have soik sant noof. Might be soik santy noof, I don’t know.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Just like it sounds. S-o-i-x-a-n-t-e n-e-u-f.”
“I’ve never seen that combination of letters in English.”
“It must be something pretty weird. It’s not even in the dictionary.”
“I guarantee I’m not asking my folks about that one, either.”
“Ask Carrie Denham. Go up and ask her ‘Hey, would you like to soik sant noof?”
“I don’t know what it is,” I giggled, “but I’ll bet she’d make it pretty great.”
At my high school, prom was for juniors and seniors and whomever they invited. The prom itself was organized by the juniors, which never made sense to me—and definitely didn’t make sense to Parker Graham, as he points out in this passage:
There was one concept I was entirely unclear on, but no one else asked about it so I kept it to myself: How could the junior class be expected to put on a prom if no one had ever been to one before? “Seriously,” I asked Finley, “are we supposed to rely on those of you who were lucky enough to get invited to last year’s prom as sophomores? Does this make sense? We’ve never been to a prom in any sort of official capacity, so it’s like ‘OK, you juniors have to put on a prom for the seniors. Any questions?’ ‘Yeah, what’s a prom?’ I mean, really, I don’t get it. I’ve seen pictures in the yearbook and I know there’s streamers and the girls wear long dresses, but that’s about it. Enlighten me.”
“Enlighten you?” said Finley. “I don’t think I’m going to live that long.”
“Tell me about the prom, dipstick.”
“There’s streamers and the girls wear long dresses. They decorate the gym so you can’t really even tell it’s the gym—there’s a false ceiling and one of those mirror ball things. The bleachers are folded in and pushed against the walls, but they hang streamers in front of them so you don’t even notice. They have round tables for like four couples each, there’s a band in one corner, the teachers all sit at tables to one side, you dance, you drink punch, you get transported to a world of magical romance—oh, no, wait, that last part was down in Ghost Hollow afterward.”
“All right, you’ve told me what goes on at the prom. Now help me understand how we’re supposed to know the first thing about making one happen.”
“Well, what, exactly?”
“How are we supposed to know where to find a false ceiling and how to install one? How do we go about finding a band? Who mixes the punch? Who hangs the streamers? Who moves the tables?”
“I could be wrong,” said Finley, “but you might be overthinking things just a tad.”
“Only because I don’t get it.”
“I think we’ll all get assigned to a committee of some sort.”
I didn’t see how that was going to help. If you took a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing and put them on committees, it seemed like you’d just have a bunch of committees that didn’t know what they were doing. The main sticking point in my mind was that I didn’t see what was stopping the juniors from deciding that this year’s prom would be, say, a go-kart race.
One more quick one from Parker and Finley, this time as they’re trying to get a round of golf in in the early evening:
We walked in just as Elmer was just about to lock the nightly deposit bag. “Hold the bus, there, Elmer,” said Finley. “We’re squeezing in nine.”
The old-timer glanced out the window. “Sun’ll be down ’fore you’re done.”
“That’s okay, we’ve got glow-in-the-dark balls.”
“But,” I said, “the penicillin seems to be helping.”
Here’s a passage with a bit more poignance. Parker has invited Angie Allen—now a college freshman—to the prom and after-prom party, and rather than go back to Spalding in the early morning hours she sleeps on the living room sofa at the Graham house. Parker is sitting on the floor beside her and there’s some rudimentary making out in progress and some touching here and there until Parker is spooked by noises from down the hall:
I removed my hand from under the blanket. “What’s the matter, baby? That was feeling so good.”
“There are people here.”
“They’re asleep.”
“But they expect me to just go to bed and let you sleep.”
“Your mom, maybe. I’ll bet your dad isn’t thinking ‘Oh my god the world’s going to end if my son touches a tit.” I blinked, and she touched my face. “That was supposed to make you laugh, baby.”
“Sorry.”
“Baby—have you ever?”
“Yeah, with the marching band girl.”
“Really? All the way?”
“God, no. I meant, I touched her like that.”
“And that’s it?” I nodded, and she said “Honey—” and trailed off. She sighed and clutched my hand again, refusing to let me pull away, touching it to her face. “Parker—it’s late and I might be getting delirious, but I think you’re a great guy and I had a fantastic time with you tonight. But there’s been times when I’ve wanted so bad to be your girlfriend and other times when I don’t think it would ever work. Tonight I don’t think it would ever work between us. I just wanted you to touch me a little, make me feel good before I went to sleep. But your reaction—oh, god, I know where it comes from, I know you’re a good Christian boy and all that. I just don’t think we’ll ever be in the same place, you know? You always make me laugh, always make me feel special—but in some ways I feel ten years older than you instead of two. I’m sorry, baby, I know I’m hurting your feelings.”
I shook my head; she reached up and felt the moisture in my eyes.
“I’m an idiot,” she whispered. “I’m an idiot for hurting you on your prom night.”
“You’re too smart to be an idiot,” I choked.
“I’ll bet my chemistry professor would argue that with you.”
One of my favorite chapters—and one cut out of whole cloth, one with no real-life equivalent except for the fact that there was a big old mansion across the highway from my high school—is “In Which a Hex is Placed and Lifted.” It’s all about rumors and kids who don’t fit in and how students react when someone claims to have put a hex on the school. Here’s Parker and Finley and some of their friends at the beginning of the chapter, discussing the rumor they’ve heard:
“What exactly were they supposedly doing?” asked Laura. “OK, there were people in robes, but what were they doing?
J.D. shrugged. “I heard they were sacrificing a lamb.”
“Cause everyone wants sheep blood in their living room,” said Finley.
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
Thatch held up a finger. “The thing to do would be get with Phaedra and her brother and tell them about Jesus. Bring ’em around before they get in too deep.”
“Sounds like it’s already pretty deep,” said Jennifer.
“Deep is right,” said Finley.
Laura scoffed. “I’d like to see some proof. Whoever saw it should go back and take pictures.”
“And get kidnapped and sacrificed?” said Jennifer.
“Jen, all you’d get is pictures of a family playing Scrabble.”
“Devil Scrabble,” said Finley.
Joe Finley finds the whole thing ridiculous, but takes every opportunity to take a poke at any friend who thinks maybe there’s something to the rumor after all:
Before school the next day, I saw the Crandall boy goofing off and playing grab-ass with a couple of his eighth-grade friends. It didn’t seem like something a devil-worshiping lamb sacrificer would do. “He just acts like a regular kid,” I told Finley at lunch. “I think if it was normal to see your family walking around in robes and killing livestock, it’d be hard to act normal.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But maybe you’d go out of your way to blend in.” Then he added in a spooky voice: “Like I do.”
What Readers Think
I entered Trombone Answers in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards Competition in 2016, and while it didn’t finish in the money I did get some great notes from the judge. This person got it.
Trombone Answers is a well-written coming-of-age story full of gentle sarcasm and wit. I enjoyed the sexual tension within the main character as he navigates through relationships while finding his own code of morals somewhere between holy principles and reality: trombone answers…I really enjoyed this story. I think it is one of the more exceptional coming-of-age stories I have read simply because you’ve done such a terrific job of letting the reader see into Parker’s head that he really does want to do the right thing, yet he must come to terms with his natural, hormonal urges…Well done! Thank you for the privilege of reading this excellent novel!
And some very nice Amazon reviews:
“This reflection on the formative years of middle school and high school is a delightful read. Like something you might read from Bill Bryson or Jean Shepherd, it's laced with humor, but it isn't afraid to dig a lot deeper. Some moments are sad, others are warm, and all are thought-provoking. Anyone growing up in the Midwest, especially in a small town, is likely to feel transported back to simpler times that weren't so simple after all. The author creates memorable characters and settings, and the first-person narration allows for deeper insights than one normally gets in this genre. Trombone Answers is a winner.”
“Trombone Answers is a coming-of-age---But wait. Do we need another coming-of-age novel? Yes. And we need this one. Donovan's novel, by turns funny and poignant, chronicles Parker Graham's journey through junior high and high school without shying away from the reality of what it means for a boy to become a man. Joined with his friend Joe and his cousin Jamie, Parker navigates through families and their drama, hormones and sex (complete with questioning of religion's stances), and the bittersweet struggle of growing up and leaving a much-loved place. The dialogue is fast and witty; the characters likable. The time is the 1970s (The Wonder Years), the place small-town Illinois, but the doubts, the fears, the joys of adolescence are timeless. And Donovan gets it all right.”
“Another fun read from John M Donovan, one of my favorite authors. It's a humorous take on all the trials and tribulations of high school, with everything I remember, from marching band to prom. Love the small town setting, sounded just like my hometown! I laughed out loud several times, but there were also parts that made me reflect on the difficulty of life at that age. I would definitely recommend it!”