The Three Great Secret Things
This novel is the sequel to Leaving Maggie Hope.
Chapter One
In the stifling heat of August and early September, 1948, at his sister Elizabeth's apartment in the Bronx, David dreamt of Maggie Hope. It was always the same. By the time he opened his eyes she had disappeared down the hall toward Elizabeth's bedroom. Sometimes he thought he saw her on the platform at the 167th Street Station, as he waited for the D train to take him downtown. He would walk toward her, and then she would vanish.
Maggie had died of cancer, and of drink, his sister said, almost a year ago, and though he had not known his mother very well, not seen much of her during his seventh and eighth grade years at Lowell School, David missed her. She was always Maggie Hope, even when she had married his father and become Maggie Hope Lear or married his stepfather and become Maggie Peterson.
He talked to her, mostly on the D train as it rattled back and forth between mid-town Manhattan and the Bronx. David thought the noise would cover his voice. "Who were you, Maggie?" he would ask, or "Tell me where you are now, Maggie Hope." Once a stranger sitting next to him caught him in the act. "You're talkin' to yourself, kid." David laughed. No point in explaining.
Now it was mid September, and David stood in the gigantic main concourse at Grand Central Station, looking up at the gold constellations in the blue sky painted on the ceiling. "There's Cancer, Maggie Hope," he whispered, "your sign," wondering if she had known even when she first showed it to him, that cancer would kill her. He wanted to tell her how he felt about starting at a new school, the strangeness of it, the uncertainty, the pain of having to make friends all over again. . . .
Critic’s Response to Anthony S. Abbott’s, The Three Great Secret Things
Linda Whitney Hobson, Ph.D., writer and editorial consultant,
David Johnson Lear is a mid-twentieth-century orphan of the Northeastern upper-middle class, who, in many ways is as bereft and blasted on the heath as his Shakespearean namesake. Why? In his mind, he has the voice of his dead, alcoholic mother, Maggie Hope, as his self-talk; he has eight or ten masters at the two prep schools he attends over the years who mentor him with care and bluster; he has a much-older sister in the Bronx who is barely surviving a rocky marriage; and he has artistic relatives scattered from Pennsylvania to Nice to Arizona to Park Avenue to California—but he doesn’t have himself. Yet.
And that space between “have” and “yet” is the old, old story told here in an entirely fresh, idiosyncratic, and dramatic way by Anthony S. Abbott, former head of Creative Writing at Davidson College,Davidson, North Carolina. Abbott has published nonfiction, five good books of poetry, and a prize-winning novel, Leaving Maggie Hope, (Novello Festival Press, Charlotte, N.C., 2003), which covers David’s earlier prep-school years and the death of his mother. But “The Three Great Secret Things” is a break-out novel, in which the author synthesizes the literary works he has taught and loves, his own memories of life at a Connecticut prep school, and the experiences he and his wife, Susan, have had raising their four children—and now seven grandchildren.
Because David Lear has had to raise himself, he becomes highly patterned in his motives and behavior—careful, scholarly, willing to please if only he can stay in the background and avoid pain. No more emotional pain at any cost!
His grades all through school are high, and he wins awards in every area of school life: athletics, scholarship, the arts, and “the spirit,” because both of his prep schools, Lowell and later Wicker, stress faith and belief as a way of building character in the future leaders of New England, and, indeed, the nation.
So David is a leader, but as time goes on, he finds himself feeling confused about “the three great secret things,” the things they don’t really tell you—none of his sources do, and with his father drinking away out in Arizona and California, he has no parent whom he can ask. And a boy might not ask anyway. What can a mere parent tell you about
(1) Sex (2) Religion and (3) Art?
How are they related? Why do they keep confounding David’s young mind? What should he do about them? And in what proportion? It’s so much easier to study, or play soccer, or learn to wrestle, or learn his lines for a play. Easier to avoid the questions that way.
Then he meets a girl like no other, Tracy Warren of Greenwich, Connecticut. And the suspense, drama, questions without answers—unlike those in school—threaten to overwhelm David. What to think? To feel? Who to trust? How? And what to say? To write?
Though the story is set in 1950, just after World War II, the dilemmas are relevant to our new century as well. How is it best to be, David wonders, where do I go and what do I need for the trip? He has his mother’s old brown leather suitcase with the gold letters stamped, “M.H.” for Maggie Hope, but maybe there’s something else he needs.
This first-rate, fresh, thoughtful, engaging novel, then, is all about “the things he carries,” the opportunities and adventures and ideas that come David’s way on the blasted heath, where he feels homeless, and what he chooses to go with—and without.
I recommend most highly this new novel from a tested, thoughtful craftsman of prose and a passionate poet of life, Tony Abbott--one of North Carolina’s finest writers. You need to read this book, whatever your age, whatever your experience, for it is as universal as it is detailed and deeply sensed in the particulars of David’s days.
