Mike Devlin is an Irish-American kid from the streets of Brooklyn who, in 1953 at the age of 17, enlists in the Navy and is sent to a naval air station in Pensacola, Florida. Over the course of roughly two years, he is gradually transformed from boy to man and learns in the process that the world holds wonders and terrors that life in Brooklyn did nothing to prepare him for. Pete Hamill sketches the details of time and place with great skill, but he is primarily interested in Mike's evolution as a person. This, too, is handled with great skill, and the use of a much older Mike as an intermittent narrator adds depth and (because we see glimpses of what life will be for him after the Navy) poignancy.

Mike's personal journey revolves around his gradual initiation into the mysteries of race, sex, and art: the first by a black corpsman whom he befriends, the second by a mysterious older woman with whom he falls in lust and then in love, and the third by his buddy Miles, who shows him that art can be more than the panels of his beloved comic strips. On a deeper level, it involves his discovery that the world (and people) are far more complicated than he'd ever imagined . . . and his attempt to come to grips with the expanded horizons he's been shown.

Summarized this way, the story sounds alarmingly pat, and in some ways it is. The plot is full of twists and turns that readers will see coming well before they actually arrive. I suspect, however, that the predictability is part of Hamill's point. Mike is no dope--a streetwise kid from a big city--but his world is so different from ours that he not only doesn't but can't see them coming. He is innocent of the realities of race in the Jim Crow-era South, innocent of 90% of human sexuality, innocent of the ways that people can be shaped by their past. The story is about Mike growing up, but also (implicitly) about how much the United States has grown up.

All this is told in an engaging, fluid style that keeps the story flowing effortlessly. The scenes of Mike's sexual awakening (numerous and varied) manage to be erotic without slipping into clinical precision or flowery romance-novel euphemism. An impromptu theological debate at a church dance is hysterically funny, and yet manages to ring entirely true. The secondary characters sometimes slip into caricature, but the main characters ring true and human.

I don't usually read "mainstream" fiction, and was initially skeptical about this one, but this novel grabbed me from the first chapter and held me for 500 pages . . . no small achievement! ( )