Surfaces of a Diamond : A Novel by Louis D. Rubin Jr. Inscribed 1st Ed Hardcover

Surfaces of a Diamond by Louis D. Rubin, Jr.

Louisiana State University Press, 1981; first edition. Hardcover. 209 pages. Marbled blue boards with gilt stamped title to spine. Inscribed in blue ink to the title page by Rubin, dated 5/13/82.

VG. Clean and firm. Slightly unbalanced. Bright pages free of markings. Dust jacket shows edge wrinkles, tears to tops of front and rear panel.

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This is the story of a fifteen-year-old boy in Charleston, South Carolina. Omar Kohn spends the spring and summer of I939 seeking to learn who he is and why.

With compelling sensitivity, Louis Rubin takes the boy through adolescent puzzlements, desires, and revelations within the circle of his family and friends. Deceptively simple in its telling, the novel is undergirded with an intense and moving exploration of the mysteries of identity in time and place.

A recent grave illness has forced Omar's father to retire in his mid-forties, a circumstance that alters the family's life. Although the crisis has reinforced the devotion between husband and wife, their almost exclusive alliance causes Omar to feel left out. He longs for his father to return to the routine of going downtown to his office every day instead of out to work in his garden in his undershirt.

Omar also copes with his best friend, Tommy Rittenhouse, and Tommy's father, who has usurped Omar's position as head of the Neighborhood League baseball team. Omar - whose chief interests are writing sports articles for the Charleston Evening Post and the school paper, Civil War history, symphonies, and quiet afternoons contemplating the Charleston marshes and boat traffic from his favorite tree-finds Tommy's preoccupation with sex disconcerting.


But Omar is not an alienated boy. He is an enthusiastic baseball player, and he enjoys a rapport with the world about him...(From the front flap)