When Love Was Spring

Rating:
Summary: Our Salad Days....
Review: When I was a teenager, my father always used to admonish me with the old saw that every generation believes that it, and it alone, is the first to discover sex and love. I'm sure he intended this as an ironic, and cynical, observation of youth.

Jerome Miller casts this truism in a different light, however, in his new book, When Love Was Spring. Miller's poignant and bittersweet tale of first loves in a small Minnesota town evokes a sense of nostalgia for youth and young love that runs much closer to the core of human existence. In it's own way this story touches on us all, and the first spark of romance, the first hammering heartbeat, which we each have felt in our own individual distance pasts.

Miller eschews cynicism in his portrayal of each new generation's discovery of the wonders of love and sex. His characters demonstrate that first love, far from being trite and ironic, is the foundation of the lives we live as we move forward into that unknown country of adulthood.

The author's style enhances this message. He writes in rich terms, slowly, relishing each word as the ink runs across the page. This style contributes to the sense of nostalgia, leading the reader down the path to those hazy, never-ending days of youth, where cumulus clouds float lazily across the deep blue sky of the green Mid-Western summer landscape, never quite blotting out the sun, never bringing an evil shower. I was reminded of the pace and cadence of The Bridges of Madison County as I read this novel, lured into the rhythm and pace of the words to a place of almost magic realism.

Almost in passing Miller reconstructs the Land That Never Was of ante-bellum America, a place of small town lives lived both in desperation and joy until interrupted by the oncoming storm of international conflict. Having spent some time in Minnesota (Man! It's cold in the winter! And in the spring...and in the fall....), I can readily recognize the places and the characters portrayed by the author. He has captured them in life-like detail, from the way they plant flowers in the garden to the description of the houses in which they live out their lives during the bleak years of the depression. His eye for physical detail is telling. His understanding of his characters' motivations and emotions is deeper than their own.

Miller has created a portrait here, on both microscopic and macroscopic scales. In When Love Was Spring he captures the power of first love in a way we as individuals can feel and remember, and a view of small-town life that is going, going....