Four Miles to Pinecone

Ex-library hardcover in --above-- average-- condition. Library card holder, markings, stamps, stickers and writing. DJ with some wear on corners and edges. Outer page edges with tanning, stains and foxing. Minnesota author John Hassler uses Four Miles to Pinecone as an allegory to itself. He opens by stating summer is over then proceeds to tell a tale of growing up and making decisions of one particular summer. In the end, the book becomes its own forty-seven page assignment (and then some) as described in the early chapters. Hassler weaves an intricate tale using metaphors along the way. Particularly poignant is the main characters inability to use a manual transmission on a car. Hassler writes how he often gets stuck in one gear due to unfamiliarity with a clutch. This is a metaphor for his character's inablity to change gears in his life. He insists on working in a grocery store, and plans to do so forever (so it seems), or how he cannot turn in his friend whose become a burglar. An incident at his uncle's isolated cabin causes a sixteen-year-old to reexamine his decision to keep silent about a robbery he witnessed. U20.