The Age of Longing

June M. Blurton is a retired speech pathologist.

Howard Wheeler and his mother have heart attacks in the same week. Hers
is fatal. His is not, and during his convalescence he has time to
reflect on his life. He was the only child of an unfortunate marriage.
His mother, a rigid, joyless schoolteacher, was the last woman who
should have married Buddy Wheeler, an easygoing and charming athlete.
Wheeler played baseball and hockey for his home-town teams, but the
highlight of his life was a four-game series against the old Montreal
Maroons of the National Hockey League. Brought up in a strained
atmosphere, Howard developed into a timid, socially clumsy man, lacking
his mother’s ability to disregard society’s strictures.

The author paints an interesting picture of life in small-town Ontario
during the 1930s and 1940s—the poverty, the meanness of spirit, the
disapproval directed at people who do not follow accepted patterns of
conduct, the machinations of a minor-hockey league, and the partying.
The story holds the attention of the reader, and the characters are
interesting and three-dimensional. This is a gentle book, with no great
ups or downs, but satisfying in its simplicity.