Bøker av Edgar L Biamonte

Mepham High School is a highly-detailed, well-written story that occurred during the nineteen forties which takes the reader on a journey in time and culture that captures interest and attention. All incidents and much of the dialogue are accurate.  Names are fictitious except for Jack Solomons, Sal D’Angelo’s best friend who edited several of his books.Though the story includes Mepham losing its one hundred first wrestling match after a hundred consecutive wins, it is about Sal D’Angelo’s high school life. Though an intelligent regent student, he has trouble with school work because of attention deficit disorder and his difficulty adjusting to teen behavior.Sal also has trouble coping with his dysfunctional parents.  An outstanding flutist as a staff musician playing on NBC and CBS, Dad is egotistical, materialistic, and conservative.  He is also domineering, unjust and stern.  Catering to Dad’s chauvinistic ways, Mom is unhappy.  Treated like a slave, because of Dad’s income, she tolerates him, often bragging to musician friends about never washing a dish.  Nor does either parent praise Sal or his sister about anything.Though loving and possessing a good personality, Sal is bashful with girls, especially since most belong to cliques that associate with boys with varsity letters in sports. Nevertheless, naively curious about the world and stunned while listening to news about the casualties during World War II, he eventually develops an iconoclastic way of thinking, yet with a sense of humor.  Absentmindedly noting little things around him like leaves on trees, insects, and the ballerinas printed in the wall paper at home suggests that Sal isn’t as maladjusted as he thinks. In fact, he is like most teens his age.

P. S. 201 takes place in a jungle-like section of Brooklyn during the Thirties.  Son of dysfunctional parents, Sal D’Angelo suffers from attention deficit disorder (unknown then). Though petrified when Mom starts putting him in the dark basement at age four for not drinking his milk which he hates, he is happy about starting school.  Intelligent, creative, and loving, he assumes others are similar, and is shocked.  Bullies abound, kicking small boys including him, even girls during recess and after school.  Though he reciprocates, they beat him up regularly.  Blaming Sal for inciting them, Mom constantly slaps him across the face for arriving home late, disheveled, or both.Lacking parental love and attention, Sal soon becomes the class clown.  Receiving D’s in conduct throughout the grades, he infuriates Dad, especially when Sal blames his teachers for being mean and unfair.Dad finally appears unexpectedly at the class door, embarrassing Sal as an eighth grader. Miss O’ Malley, his teacher, is prejudiced against Italians.  Refusing to discuss Sal, she practically slams the door in Dad’s face. Humiliated, Dad blames Sal and explodes unmercifully at him that night.Moved to the last seat in the last row days later, Sal manages not to utter one word during the last six school weeks. Happy about graduating, and expecting an ‘A’ in conduct, he receives another ‘D’.  Stunned, he breaks down and retreats from reality.  School and houses appear to fade away before his eyes while he pauses on the school corner to look back.  Amazed, frightened, and almost fainting, he waits until they seem to start edge back before heading for Grandma’s house. Barely discerning someone playing The Rustle of Spring emanating through a nearby opened window, he breaks into tears.