This novel returns to Lowell, Massachusetts, in the late 1930s, where teenage Jack Duluoz is finishing high school. He is a promising athlete, devoted to his family and friends, and he falls in love with Maggie Cassidy, a young Irish-American girl. Their romance is joyful but uneven, shaped by youthful pride, local gossip and Jack's uncertain future. Written with warmth and detail, the book captures the feeling of a small industrial town and the sweetness and confusion of first love. It is one of Kerouac's gentler and more traditional novels.
Quotes
I saw her, standing in the crowd, forlorn, dissatisfied, dark, unpleasantly strange.
It's only later you learn to lean your head in the lap of God, and rest in love.
Heirs leap screeching from doctors' laps while the old and the poor die on, and who's to bend over their bed and comfort.
All in life, prime, young joy days, riches of sixteen, I sneaked off to the lazy unresponsive girl three miles across town by the tragic-flowing dark sad Concord.