Jedi Summer by John Boden

Cemetery Dance Publications, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587678356

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Jedi Summer is a fictionalized coming-of-age memoir by John Boden, taking place in 1983, the summer Return of the Jedi came out, when Boden was 12 and his brother Roscoe was 7. It meanders through a summer filled with the brothers playing, fighting, and just living through their days. Boden’s mother worked several jobs and he was both responsible for and unpleasant to Roscoe in the way siblings can be. Boden reflects on how his perspective has changed since then. Stylistically he uses italicized text in brackets for digressions. This would work in oral storytelling (it reminded me a bit of Donald Davis) but disrupts the flow on the page.

There are three additional stories. “Possessed by a Broken Window” is a powerful piece on grief and guilt.”Trick” is relatable to anyone who has meant to call someone important but never quite does. “The One Who Closes the Door”, a story about caretaking for the adults of your childhood, will stick with me for a long time.

The fictionalized darker and supernatural events that take place during the story range from gentle (Boden’s brother can see and interact with the ghosts of dead pets) to believable (a Ferris wheel that crashes to the ground) to the gruesome (a dead man hanging from a tree whose body has been turned into a birdhouse). Even without these, the story of these boys on summer vacation with plenty of time and imagination, and the pieces at the end, are worth reading.