The Heat Of The Sun
by David Rain
(Atlantic $36.99)
The story of Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, is widely known. In brief, a young American naval lieutenant, Pinkerton, woos and marries a Japanese maiden, Cho Cho San (Butterfly). After they spend their wedding night together, he sails away, promising to return. This he does, three years later, bringing with him his new American wife; Japanese marriage laws were somewhat lax in the early part of last century.
Butterfly is understandably distraught and kills herself, leaving behind a 3-year-old son, the result of her all-too-brief marriage.
David Rain takes the opera's libretto as a starting point for his first major novel, The Heat Of The Sun.
The boy, now called Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton II, but known to all as Trouble (with good reason), washes up at Blaze Academy, a private boys' school in Vermont. He befriends Woodley Sharpless, a lame and bookish boy, the complete opposite of Trouble's exotic and flamboyant personality.