"These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I'm going to be when my journey winds down."
Cory Mackenson, age 12, lives in Zephyr, Alabama, a quiet town that has an odd air of magic to it. One day, while Cory is out with his father delivering milk, the two witness the aftermath of a horrific murder, the victim disappearing in a lake. Tom Mackenson is deeply haunted by this, and Cory attempts to find clues to the identity of the murderer.
...and yet, despite the above event, this book is truly about the life of a boy. The murder provides a story arc. a conflict and a climax, but Boy's Life is, at its core, a Slice of Life novel.
One of Robert R. McCammon's best-known books, and winner of the 1992 World Fantasy Award, Boy's Life is something along the lines of an occasionally spookier "To Kill a Mockingbird, but with a 12-year-old boy in the 1960's.
Not to be confused with the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America titled Boys' Life or Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life.".
This novel contains examples of:
- Animal Motifs: It's subtle, but there are recurring themes of birds and flight. Yes, they are extremely relevant.
- Beardness Protection Program: Lampshaded. Toward the end of the book, we discover the man killed in the beginning had helped relocate a Nazi scientist. The victim's brother comes looking for him and, learning he's dead, believes the killer is the Nazi. He shows Cory's father a picture but explains that he's probably changed his appearance, and the easiest way to go unrecognized is to "shave your head and grow a beard." The vet, who was much earlier described as a bald, bearded man, is the Nazi and the killer.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The murderer, The Klan, and the redneck outlaw Blaylock family are all independent, prominent antagonists who threaten Cory and/or his friends and family across the year.
- …But He Sounds Handsome:
- Well before Dr. Lezander is revealed as a Nazi fugitive, he claims that he met a Nazi after the end of World War II and says the guy was just an ordinary man who deserved to be left alone after valiantly and understandably Just Following Orders during the war.
- Some Five-Second Foreshadowing that Mr. Hargison is in The Klan comes when he objects to them being called cowardly over a cross-burning and says some people might call it a brave act.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Many of the Eccentric Townsfolk have their future prominence obviously telegraphed, but some who seem innocuous play notable roles in at least one later chapter.
- Kindly Vet and church greeter Lezander operates on Cory's dog after it gets hurt and is the murderer from the opening chapter and a Nazi war criminal, along with his wife.
- Mr. Hargison, the mailman who saves Cory and his friends from bullies, is part of the small but increasingly dangerous local cell of The Klan.
- Lainie, a bitter prostitute who is present when Tom calls the sheriff to report the murder of the man in the lake, is the girlfriend of the late hot rodder Little Stevie and becomes the Protectorate of his frequently seen ghost.
- Carl Bellwood, a Posthumous Character friend of Cory, returns as a ghost to give Cory's dead dog Rebel a new home.
- Mr. Fixit Mr. Lightfoot only gets one speaking scene before disarming an atom bomb in the last act.
- Fire Chief Mourchette is first seen hovering in the background during an early town meeting and gets one line snapping at Mr. Moultry's racist suggestion to abandon the black community during a flood. Much later, he is one of the only people to agree to be deputized when Donny Blaylock's family want to break him out of jail and replaces J.T. Amory as sheriff after he resigns.
- Cool Old Guy: Mr. Lightfoot is a kindly old Mister Fixit master.
- Hurl It into the Sun: At the end of the second part, Nemo, enraged by the fact he has to move yet again literally hurls a baseball at the sun and stalks off. The ball never comes down.
- I Own This Town: Moorwood Thaxter owns most of the big businesses and mortgages in town, and his word can dictate town policy. Moorwood hasn't been seen in public in years, though and his Crazy Sane son Vernon announces his wishes to the town, with Tom suspecting that Vernon frequently lies about whether his dad actually wants something done due to how much nicer and community-minded Moorwood's supposed orders have gotten in recent years.
- Magical Realism: This book pushes the Willing Suspension of Disbelief quite far with the amount of ridiculously prevalent supernatural happenings, including but not limited to: ghosts, a magical woman who can turn bullets into snakes, a dog being brought back to life through prayer, a completely unexplained triceratops/rhino thing, a baseball apparently thrown INTO THE SUN, a river monster big enough to eat people and dogs, and a magical biting bike.
- The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Cory spends ten months gradually forming suspicions and looking for clues about a murder, but the same day he solves the case, two Nazi hunters who would have quickly found the killer without his help arrive in town and even end up helping save him from a likely He Knows Too Much fate, although Dr. Lezander briefly escapes and meets his end through other means.
- Mr Fix It: Mr. Lightfoot can fix anything. He even disarms an atomic bomb.
- Subliminal Seduction: According to Reverend Blesset, the Beach Boys make their listeners predisposition to sin. ("The Devil Is My Strawberry!")
- Unexplained Recovery: Rebel abruptly heals from fatal wounds due to nothing more than prayer. This is not a good thing.
- Villain's Dying Grace:
- The one thing that keeps Jerkass Klansman Mr. Moultry from being a pure Hate Sink is when he confesses about where a bomb he set in the Civil Rights Museum is when he thinks he is about to die (although he ends up surviving).
- When the murderer and Cory are trapped in a sinking car, in the same lake where the killer, a fugitive concentration camp doctor, disposed of his victim in a sinking car, Mr. Hutchenson begs the dying killer to help Cory escape the car before it sinks, and the killer does so.
