Introduction
Many writers have written of regrets of the past, even Shakespeare in many sonnets. We all feel the regret of things past,"of growing older and missing the excitements and thrills of youth and of discoveries.
But the experience of living through one's life is a valuable commodity, indeed, for without the sagacity garnered from age, where would the young ones learn about the joys and pleasures of the physical as well as the spiritual aspects of existence? From the back seat of a car, perhaps? Behind the garage? Or maybe from the dull and boring sex-education classes foisted on them in high school when it is too late, anyway!
In this novel, we find many lucky boys-lucky because Laura Brevitz, their twenty-seven-year-old teacher, provides them with the solicitous tutoring they needed to grow from the throes of inexperienced youth into manhood. Of course, she benefits from the experience as much as they do, but certainly it is her benevolence as much as her need for young flesh that provokes her into teaching her boys about the facts of life. There is something for all of us to learn by perusing the pages of this book. A lesson that is often ignored and reviled by the moralists of our generation. The message is the media and the media is simply love.
Charles Steffen's novel contrasts the sophistication of adulthood with the innocence of youth, and proves, unequivocally, that there is something to be gained by bringing the two states of life together in the intimacy of physical love. Laura shows that there is one place, at least, where the generation gap does not exist and that is in the arms of one another.
The Publisher