Touched by Scott Campbell

From the Publisher

Robbie Young is an ordinary twelve-year-old boy about to drop a bombshell that will devastate his small town family. One day he rides his bike home after school, finds his mother in the kitchen making dinner, and speaks aloud the secret he's been keeping for a year, "Jerry Houseman's been touching me." Robbie has been molested and the Young family will never be the same. From that moment on, the novel unfolds with inexorable power. The story is narrated in four parts: first by Robbie's mother, then by Jerry Houseman himself, then by Houseman's wife Linda, and concluded by Robbie himself fifteen years later, when he has returned to town for a high school reunion. Each voice is remarkably persuasive and utterly convincing, and the result is a novel that is impossible to put down as it is impossible to forget.

Publishers Weekly

Honest, unpretentious prose characterizes this first novel about a case of criminal sexual misconduct and two families in crisis. In the opening chapter, set in 1980, Linda Young, 33, who lives in a "friendly, safe" neighborhood in Jackson, Mich., describes the moment when her 12-year-old son, Robbie, drops "his bomb": "Jerry Houseman's been touching me." Robbie says the abuse has been going on for "a while," which stretches into a few months, then a year. Jerry, a neighbor with three daughters, has been showering Robbie with gifts, treating him like a surrogate son-or so Linda has assumed. Robbie begs his mother not to tell anyone, but she and her husband call the police. Campbell delivers the story of Jerry's arrest, trial and the aftermath, from four points of view. They include Linda's unabashedly angry account, Jerry's detached and sentimental narration and a poignant portrait by Jerry's wife, Jeanette, of her husband, who has been previously attracted to young boys. The final and most convincing voice, that of Robbie as a young adult, gets to the heart of the boy's turmoil. Readers must wade past some superficial narrative here, but they'll find that, through Jeanette and Robbie, Campbell accomplishes the formidable task of illuminating the complex feelings and issues that confront his seemingly ordinary people. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Campbell is right on target in this first novel, which takes a close look at child sexual abuse. Robbie Young seems like a typical, healthy 12-year-old until the day he tells his mother, "Jerry Houseman's been touching me." From that point his life spins out of control. Jerry is arrested, Robbie testifies in court, and Jerry is sentenced to ten years in prison. Robbie's story develops layer by layer as the incident is recounted, first by Robbie's mother, then by Jerry, Jerry's wife, and finally Robbie himself. Each player brings a different perspective to the story as each looks at the sequence of events, analyzes motives, responds to emotions, and assigns guilt. Unfortunately, no one considers the child. Campbell treats an emotional topic with calm intelligence, looking at the ramifications of each player's actions and following the incident to its logical conclusion. Recommended for most fiction collections.-Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Kirkus Reviews

A cunningly constructed if didactic debut that probes under a big issue—how parents and the justice system deal with a boy "touched" by a neighborhood child molester.

Opening in the voice of Linda, the guilt-stricken mother of the molested boy, Robbie, the novel at first seems destined to be a mediocre Movie-of-the-Week vehicle. But the Betty Crocker mold soon breaks when we discover that Linda can't think of the neighbor, Jerry, touching Robbie without feeling her own secret lover's hand. Soon we're seeing how the flaws of a marriage seed the crime. Pregnant and married to Ken when she was 16, Linda thinks of herself as selfless, yet she pursues an affair during the hours when she should be supervising Robbie. Ken calls himself responsible because he's calm and steady—but he's an utterly remote husband and father. And Robbie's older brother, Danny, thinks he's doing his duty when he attacks Jerry in front of the neighbors, just as Linda's angry guilt drives her to scream "Child molester!" to the world and then press for Jerry's arrest, regardless of what might be best for Robbie. The core of the story is a portrait of Jerry and his wife, Jeanette: a couple with three daughters and a seemingly balanced life. Jerry's arrest reveals a man who can't help what he is, and a woman who discovers that forgiveness and unconditional love aren't enough. When Jerry pleads guilty rather than see Robbie cross-examined, Jeanette realizes that Jerry's love for the boy is actually, in a twisted way, truer than anything he feels for her.

Commercial but with literary pretensions, this is a work flawed, ironically, by a writer exercising too much control and calculation on his material and by occasional lecturing. These are flaws, though, more than counterbalanced by Campbell's unconventional treatment of a subject that is usually a springboard for cheap melodrama.

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