Running in Place

by David Karraker

January 8, 1958. The sun was setting directly into Ben's eyes by the time they finally reached the Highway 47 exit road that would take them south into town. They made the turn and headed past the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1410716880
• ISBN13: 9781410716880
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: 1st Book Library
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Learning to Live, Learning to Change and to Love

David Karraker's "Running in Place" both moved me and stopped me in my tracks. His story of Janie and Ben, young marrieds - Ben in college, Janie waiting tables to support them - in the late fifties captures the pulse of the time and is relentless in its examination of the internal conflicts and angst of each. The couple have found themselves with a baby boy right at the time they are beginning their own growing-up. Both partners each want and don't want to be married; want and don't want grown-up responsibilities; want and don't want to settle into harness. Written within the context of the experimentation and young resentments of married life, the stress of adjusting to the economic, academic, emotional and sexual pressures of Ben's college years is brought into searing focus.Though I did not experience what these two did, I was in college at that time of personal stretching in a culture beginning to stretch beyond the so-called "placid" fifties. The rhythms of people growing up, and maybe growing apart, are sounded to the beat of a country and a culture that itself was growing into something new and unknown. Would Janie's and Ben's lives be as tumultous as the decade to come? I found myself thinking about this story and about them, who by now had become my uneasy friends, for a long time. I highly recommend this read to anyone interested in living those times with Janie and Ben, or just wishing to go back and re-examine their own personal stretching and growing. Karraker will take you on a pulsating and uncompromising ride!

Portlander's Tale of 50's College Couple Rings True

Maine Sunday Telegram, May 16, 2004:It is a January evening in 1958 when Ben and Janie Barthold, a young married couple with an infant baby, drive into a middle-America college town that will be their home for the next several years. Janie plans to work in a pizza joint to support her husband. He's there to earn his undergraduate degree.The two are quietly optimistic as they begin their version of the American dream.With this opening scene - superbly written in accurate detail reflecting small-town America 46 years ago - David Karraker begins "Running in Place." And manages to evoke an almost palpable sense of nostalgia."They made the turn and headed past the tree-shaded homes on Main Street," he writes, "to the business district - the Kroger's supermarket and the hardware and the bank and rows of shops - with hardly a sideways glance, and onto a nearby tree-shaded side street to the converted storefront apartment they'd rented two weeks before.""Running In Place" is Karraker's first novel. His shorter fiction has appeared in literary journals, and a musical play, "The Magnolia Club," was performed at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. He lives in Portland.In the book's opening prologue, Karraker gives readers the impression that good things will likely happen to Ben and Janie. But it doesn't take long to learn that darker currents run through this novel about college years.We learn early on that Janie became pregnant with little Danny when she and Ben were still in high school. Though Ben professed his love at the time, and they married in the early stages of her pregnancy, the event troubles her.When Janie recalls thoughts she had while selecting a wedding gown in 1957, we sense a warning that the Bartholds' marriage may be fragile."She was almost positive she must love him still," Karraker writes. "She must after the things she'd let him do, the things they'd both done. ... You shouldn't marry people you don't love, and so she tried to remember what she'd felt for Ben up to when she found out the stupid rabbit died and it all went away."As the couple launches into their new life in the college town, Karraker's skill in descriptive writing shines. Witness what he has to say about Janie, as she finishes her late-night shift in the pizza-and-beer restaurant that serves a mostly college-age crowd."Here it is coming up on two in the morning and she's not done in yet," Karraker writes. "She's been working non-stop since eight but still looks spiffy in her pert white uniform. Janie slides the coin tray out and sets it on the counter for Sue Ellen to count while Norm wrestles the last boozy college knucklehead through the front door and turns the big brass key in the lock."It's at the restaurant, a noisy place with Formica table tops and a juke box that cranks out tunes by the Four Freshmen and Billie Holiday, that Janie meets Bill Lockerbee. He's a student. He knows Ben. And he pays attention to Janie; something that's been missing in her life since