Sing, Ronnie Blue

by: Gary D. Wilson

Published by: Rager Media Inc.

Reviewed by Harold N. Walters

Ronnie Blue is an anachronism. He still looks the same as he did in high school and still drives the same car. He is “not the most wholesome person you could be spending your time with.” He is a junkman’s son.

It is the Fourth of July, Ronnie’s 23rd birthday. He has recently lost his job at Carl’s garage. Feeling persecuted, he decides to return to his hometown. With his girlfriend Charlene, he climbs into his anachronistic car and heads off towards Bartlett’s Junction, Kansas, a small town that “came to a dead stop, where it has rested for eighty-eight years.”

Back home in Bartlett’s Junction, it is inevitable that Ronnie’s path intersect John Klein’s. John now works in his father’s bank but during high school he and Ronnie sang duets at assorted club meetings and parties.

In Sing, Ronnie Blue Wilson explores small town life at different social levels. He examines the pressures placed on Ronnie Blue by an abusive father who has constantly told him he would amount to nothing. He also examines the pressures placed on John Klein by a father who has always wanted him to follow family tradition and become a banker.

The predictable, inevitable clash between the opposing social levels is fated to happen in Bartlett’s Junction when Ronnie returns to discover that there is no longer harmony between him and John Klein.

Sing, Ronnie Blue suggests that contrary to Thomas Wolfe’s adage, not only is one able to go home again, but one is never able to leave home, a person is defined by one’s home. Ronnie can no more not be a junkman’s son than John can not be the banker’s son.

Wilson’s short novel is compact and concise. His language is as solid and forceful as a rabbit-punch to the kidneys. The book has echoes of stories that have become part of American culture. While reading it, I could not help hearing, with the same tragic irony, Jimmy Cagney in the movie White Heat yelling, “Made it, Ma. Top of the world.”

Armchair Interviews says: Everyone has a story of people in their hometown.

Author’s Web site: http://www.SingRonnieBlue.com