The school on Heart's Content Road
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15
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The school on Heart's Content Road spirals out from the story of Mickey Gammon, a disaffected fifteen-year-old dropout who has been evicted from his home by his overwrought half-brother. With the help of his new friend, Rex York, the captain of the local militia, Mickey is introduced to the secretive world of the Settlement. Run by a man known to many as 'The Prophet,' the Settlement is a rural cooperative in alternative energy, farm produce, and locally made goods. Falsely demonized by the media as a compound of sin, the Settlement's true nature remains foreign to outsiders. It is at the Settlement where Mickey's life collides with that of another deserted child, six-year-old Jane--a cunning, beautiful girl of mixed race, whose mother is in jail on trumped-up drug charges. 'Secret Agent' Jane prowls the Settlement in her heart-shaped sunglasses, imagining that her childish plans to bring down the community will reunite her with her mother. As they struggle to adjust to their new, complex surrogate family, Mickey and Jane witness the mounting unrest within the Settlement's ranks, which soon builds to a shocking and devastating crescendo. Vehement and poetic, The School on Heart's Content Road questions the nature of family, struggle, and authority in an intensely diverse nation. It is an urgent plea from the disenfranchised who, though disregarded and shoved to the fringes of society, refuse to be silenced.
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There are books about revolutions that are really novels, and not a manifesto. This is not one of them. More propaganda than literature, furnished with schticks rather than narrative this is a clunky sophomore novel. The redeeming feature is the intricacy of character in Rex and Gordon. However, all of the other characters, even the ostensible main characters are not featured enough to be much more than spokespeople for the various political causes Chute uses them for.
