David Arthur Jarratt

Quarry David Arthur Jarratt

On a hot July day in 1944, the chubby member of a group of soon-to-be Seventh Graders discovers a body tied to two cinder blocks at the bottom of the town quarry while swimming. Quarry is about the discovery of not only the body, but also the leader of a Nazi spy ring that operates from their small Ohio town where a world-renowned scientist is doing secret experiments at the local Polytechnic Institute to facilitate the end of the war
This is a "coming-of-age" novel about six boys growing up in Middle America during the height of World War II. The effect the war has on their daily lives and the lives of their families. It combines the warmth of a loving family with the terror of a dysfunctional one; the goodness of a War Widow, her affection for children, no matter their color or ethnic background, of a wonderful singer and teacher; and the camaraderie of not only the boys, but the local police force, which is brought together by this mystery.
The quarry of this story brings all these elements together and shows the characters at their best and worst, as the war progresses and sabotage is on the increase by enemy and American alike. We meet FBI agents from Cleveland and Cincinnati, learn the identity of the body found in the quarry, are brought back to 1940's America through the use of the slang of the period, gasoline and food rationing, popular radio shows, movies and visual images of the war through the popular Movie-tone News.
The headlines of the major newspapers, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch shout the bad news at home and on the war fronts as two of the boys deliver their papers each morning. It demonstrates how entertainment even then, the love of music, square dancing, and "the movies," helped America survive the war and its necessary absences at home.
We watch the love grow between several of the adult characters and a budding infatuation of one of the boys for a girl also starting seventh grade.
The inner workings of a small-town police force, the County Sheriff's office, the Highway Patrol and even the Federal Bureau of Investigation are revealed throughout the novel, all through the eyes of one of the boys, who returns to his home town after a career in the Army as an aviator and quasi adventurer.
Quarry offers a unique look at 1944 America through his eyes: the good and the bad, the ethical and unethical, the moral and amoral, the best and worst of what America was then and with a foreshadowing of what America has become today!