Getting fired from his construction job on the high steel is only the last in a string of bizarre events that finds Mick at home and in charge of doing the shopping, laundry, cooking and every other job that makes up the life of a homemaker. However, during the year that Summer of Light encompasses, Mick pretty much masters all the above while keeping his wandering four-year-old within view, all three kids fed, caught up with homework, at scheduled activities and, as much as possible, unbored. In a book that ranges from slaptstick to tender, W. Dale Cramer entertains and more. As in previous books, he uses the stories of ordinary people – this time Mick Brannigan and his family – to focus on things that really matter, like gaining strength from the look of discovery in a child’s eyes, accepting help when it’s offered, and finding God amongst the poor and the outcast.
The characters in this book are everyday people one could meet in any town. Mick, the point-of -view and main character, is an iron-worker whose cooking experience when he starts his homemaker stint consists of boiling water and throwing a pack of dry noodles in his lunch bucket. His wife Layne, who has just started a long-postponed career as a paralegal, is both career woman and mother bear, willing to stand up to anyone to defend their kids – eight-year-old-Ben, seven-year-old Toad (Clarissa) and four-year-old Dylan. Aubrey, Mick’s uppity neighbor who becomes his photographic mentor, is one of the characters I found most amusing, especially at the beginning. Finally there is the mysterious Man With No Hands who drifts in and out of the action. He seemed to me a sort of Christ figure (reminding me of Cramer characters Harley in Sutter’s Cross and Moss in Bad Ground).
The construction site of an Atlanta high rise is soon displaced by the Brannigans’ suburban acreage as the story’s setting. Both are described in satisfying detail. Putting a domestically inexperienced yet creative man like Mick in charge of a suburban spread complete with three kids, a wily dog, goat and chickens is a recipe for all kinds of hilarious misadventures. The sight of a man’s man fumbling with the multi-task challenges of the above gave this (female) reader lots of chuckles.
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