Brokehead Dad An injured father grows up in Garth Stein's award-winning novel. BY MOLLY TEMPLETON HOW EVAN BROKE HIS HEAD AND OTHER SECRETS: fiction by Garth Stein. Soho Press, 2005. Paperback edition, 2006, $13. Winner of a 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. It's hard to write about current music scenes. No matter what genre or sub-genre a writer picks, he or she is going up against the experiences and opinions of the other people who consider the same scene — other musicians, fans, even critics. Garth Stein circumvents this dilemma with remarkable grace in his second novel, How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, by having the titular Evan play in a band that appears to just be a rock band. There is no mention of fashion, magazines, made-up people standing in for trendy real-life figures (though Seattle-based readers may know more than the rest of us). It's a delicate balancing act, centering what's essentially a delayed-coming-of-age story in a setting fraught with easy missteps, but Stein pulls it off admirably with Evan, his band, his band's existence, and, most of all, Evan's relationship with his long-lost 14-year-old son, Dean. Evan and Dean meet through grief: Dean's mother Tracy, Evan's high school love, was killed in a car crash just before the book begins. Evan and Tracy's past, like many old events and wounds in the book, is revisited from different perspectives. The matter of who wanted to do what about Tracy's pregnancy is somewhat up for debate, but the fact of the matter is, Evan has a teenage son, and, he quickly finds, he wants to have a teenage son. And no surprise, that: Dean, for being a secondary character in a book that belongs to his father, is a beautifully drawn, understandably confused young man who's learning to push his boundaries, to understand his past, to grow into his present and to make defining choices. Neither Dean nor Evan is a pat figure. Both are deeply flawed, and their moments together, be they awkward, bonding or downright awful, are enough to ring bells in the heads of all former teens. As if a new teenage son isn't enough to handle, Evan's got other things on his mind, foremost of which is the epilepsy he's had since running in front of a car on a dare when he was younger. The dare belonged to Evan's little brother, Charlie, but Evan took it instead, sealing a fate that dogs him at the worst possible times, and which Stein writes about with striking empathy. Evan's also just met an almost too-good-to-be-true woman, Mica, a sought-after sound engineer. His band may be on the brink of something, but Evan, who had a one-hit wonder band 10 years ago, knows better than to hold his breath. But with all this going on, the real action in Stein's book is inside Evan's "broken" head, as his existence is shaken up by Dean. Watching this kid — his kid — deal with being a kid who's just met his dad brings a lot of old stories back to Evan, who sifts through his complicated life and puts the pieces back together in a way that makes room for his messed up, amazing son. Garth Stein's clear-eyed prose and utterly believable dialogue makes How Evan Broke His Head an engaging, emotional read and an unexpectedly compelling story about growing up — on the part of the parent as well as the son. How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets will be released in paperback on May 10. Garth Stein reads at 7 pm Wednesday, May 3 at the UO Bookstore.     BOOK NOTES: Tobias Wolff gives a master class with creative writing graduate students, 1:30 pm 4/27, Fir Room, EMU, UO. Interested observers are invited to attend. Contact Colleen Morgan, 346-0549 or colleen@uoregon.edu … Tobias Wolff reads, 8 pm 4/27, Knight Library, UO … "The Call of the Sandhill Crane: A Concert of Music and Ideas" with author David James Duncan, singer-songwriter Libby Roderick, essayist and subsistence poet Hank Lentfer and writer Kathleen Dean Moore, 7 pm 4/27, Unitarian Fellowship, Corvallis. 737-6198 … Literary zine Dry Erase release party, 6:30 pm 4/28, DIVA … Rickie Solinger discusses Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America, 11 am 4/28, Knight Library, UO … Tobias Wolff reads, 7:30 pm 4/28, LaSells Stewart Center, OSU, Corvallis … Ken and Jasmyn Klarfeld discuss He Said, She Said: A Father-Daughter Perspective, 3 pm 4/29, Barnes & Noble … Charlotte Childress (Clueless at the Top) speaks at the Eugene Veg Education Network meeting, 7 pm 5/1, McNail-Riley House … William L. Sullivan gives a slide show on New Hikes in Northwest Oregon, 7 pm 5/2, 282 Lillis, UO … Garth Stein reads from How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, 7 pm 5/3, UO Bookstore … "Laughing Matters: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not" lecture by Marc Acito, 6:30 pm 5/4, Baker Downtown Center. $5-$10 donation for non-Mid-Valley Willamette Writers members … Lucille Clifton speaks and reads, 10 am 5/4, Performance Hall, LCC, and gives an informal discussion and Q&A, 2:30 pm 5/4, LCC Center for Meeting and Learning … 10th anniversary celebration for helicoptero, with Paul Dresman, Jesus Sepulveda and others, 7:30 pm 5/4, Tsunami Books … Arnaud Maitland reads from Living Without Regret: Growing Old in the Light of Tibetan Buddhism, 7 pm 5/4, Knight Library, UO … Brian Doyle reads from The Grail, 7 pm 5/9, UO Bookstore … Barbara Blossom Ashmun (Married to My Garden) speaks at the monthly Eugene Hardy Plant group meeting, 7 pm 5/9, Agate Hall, UO. $6, $3 members … James Howard Kunstler reads from The Long Emergency, 7 pm 5/10, Knight Library, UO … Terri Jentz reads from Strange Piece of Paradise, 7 pm 5/11, UO Bookstore … Kenneth Helphand speaks on Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, 7:30 pm 5/11, 182 Lillis, UO.
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