The best humorous yet heart-tugging coming-of-age books for aging readers

I read The Summer of ‘42 in the spring of ’71, before the movie came out. Having been a teen in the 1940s, my father was intrigued by the title and bought it. I remember him laughing out loud, more than once. Being a curious fifteen-year-old, I had to find out what the hoopla was. Pubescent stirrings, mostly—that awkward stage in life, relatable no matter the era or place. In this case, love’s call comes during a summer vacation in 1942 on Nantucket Island. Hermie, his best friend, Oscy, and their nerd buddy, Benjie, are obsessed with sex—how to get it, how to do it, and how to share information once any progress is made in its endeavor. But when Hermie forms a relationship with a married woman whose husband has just left for the war, he becomes less forthright with his friends. Sometimes innocence lost is best told through the forgiving veil of nostalgia.

Infused with a Western voice, Last Bus to Wisdom plopped me down into my native neck of the woods. Redheaded Donal has never been out of Montana, but that changes in June of 1951 when Gram needs an operation due to “female trouble.” With a wicker suitcase, thirty bucks safety-pinned inside his shirt, and an imagination that gets him into trouble, young Donal takes the Greyhound bound for Wisconsin to spend the summer with Gram’s sister, his only other living relative. Aunt Kate is a bossy broad, to say the least, who’s not at all nice to her sweet-natured husband, Herman the German, let alone Donal. It’s more than any self-respecting kid can stand. So Donal skidaddles, taking the dog bus back to Montana, and Herman the German tags along for the journey. More tale spinning and trouble getting-into ensues. Their misadventures are worth the ride, and a hoot to boot. 

Not all coming-of-age novels involve adultescents. Sometimes grownups have to grow up. Such is the case with Margery Benson—English spinster, frumpy teacher, and boot-thieving fugitive—who reluctantly hires Enid Pretty, Margery’s polar opposite in looks and personality, to be her expedition assistant. The quest: the golden beetle of New Caledonia. An unlikely friendship blossoms as the two women travel from London halfway around the world in pursuit of a bug that may or may not exist, all the while being shadowed by a malaria-deranged former World War II prisoner-of-war. A female buddy book set in the 1950s, Miss Benson’s Beetle is a whacky yet heart-tugging read whose heroines come to love each despite their foibles and flaws and learn the empowerment of coming into one’s own.

Never would I expect to fall in love with a book whose anchor is boxing, but that’s exactly what happened when I read The Power of One. Possibly because Peekay—an abandoned boy of English heritage growing up in South Africa after the Boer War and during the rise of Nazi Germany—is so damn loveable. Possibly because the author is adept at weaving audacious characters, cultural clash, and mysticism into a delightful yet thought-provoking yarn. The Power of One had me at chapter one when Peekay’s Zulu nanny, a medicine man, and a chicken named Granpa Chook cure his “night water.” It takes some fancy footwork for Peekay to go from bed-wetter to welterweight champion of the world, and I was in the ring with him every step of the way.

In the great American melting pot, young love often gets caught between cultures. Such is the case with Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a novel set in Seattle, Washington, during the onset of Japanese internment camps. American-born Henry Lee is the only child of Chinese nationalists who insist he wear a button saying “I am Chinese” to avoid being identified as Japanese—not a good thing, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Henry’s schoolmate, Keiko, a third-generation US citizen, doesn’t speak the language of her Japanese ancestors. She expresses her fundamental identification with words. “I am American.” Together they share a lunchroom job, a growing love for jazz, and an understanding of what it means to be in the lower strata of an immigrant nation. Told with tenderness and a sprinkle of humor by an older, wiser Henry, the aptly titled Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet still lingers on my literary taste buds.