Now Is the Hour is a powerful, vastly entertaining story of self-awakening, of the complex bonds of family, and ultimately of America during a period of tremendous upheaval. read more...
It is early 1950s Idaho and the season of the chinook—a warm February breeze that blows across the flat cookie-sheet plains from the wrong direction. It brings arid earth and hard times, marking the end of childhood for thirteen-year-old Jake Weber and the beginning of trouble for his family. When Jake defies his father’s order to stay away from the river, an innocent swim ends with something far beyond anyone’s expectations: Jake witnesses the brutal murder of “that woman Sugar Babe” by Harold Endicott, who owns the mortgage on the Weber farm. Jake is forbidden to speak of it and name the one responsible, even as the woman’s lover, a black man, is falsely accused. Over the course of a long hot summer, this crime and its devastating aftermath forever alter Jake’s vision of his parents and his world, teaching him the true source of danger. And the true power of forbidden knowledge.
