The Sum of His Worth
By Ron Argo
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
In this coming-of-age story of love, heroism and murder, a prize-winning author returns to his Alabama childhood during the 1960’s bloody Civil Rights Movement. In the vein of To Kill a Mockingbird, Kirkus Reviews calls the novel “a profound, engrossing ... heartbreakingly real novel of the South.”
In the August heat before young Sonny Poe starts ninth grade, he witnesses in the cool nighttime woods the beating and lynching of a black boy. He escapes, but his life is now irrevocably changed.
Sonny lives out the rest of summer in terror of being found out by the town’s agitated KKK. Now desperate for guidance and answers, he latches onto a progressive doctor with a crusading spirit, a man who will turn Sonny’s and his own mysterious life upside down in a tension-fueled thriller of betrayal and corruption that can only end in tragedy—and hope.
Ron Argo
Ron Argo has been a psych-ward aide, a photographer, a Florida Keys boat captain, an award-winning newspaper reporter, a combat correspondent in LBJ's war, a plumber, carpenter, electrician, all-around jack and restorer of old houses, a would-be musician and artist who can no longer play a guitar with the arthritis. He holds three degrees to include journalism, literature and the MFA; he's gone to jail a time or two in his reckless youth but never had to post bail, been a voter in all elections, except when in Vietnam where the thought was ludicrous. He was never a bartender or preacher. Nor did he ever hold political office, if you don't count chairing a citizen's committee appointed by a board of supervisors to fight corruption over animals, and whose prize-winning newspaper series on that subject helped created the first low-cost spay and neuter clinics in a Southern California city.He has published one of the more important American war novels of the last century, an epic that one acclaimed critic/academic compared to the works of Mailer, Dos Passos, Jones and Crane.Argo's only been married twice, so he has no pressing momentum for pumping out promoting book after book, as some novelists must to do to support ex spouses, etc. He has a working, caring wife to assure his maintenance and thus survival.He is however the author of these fine, award-winning historical and thriller novels, Year of the Monkey, Baby Love, The Courage to Kill and The Sum of His Worth. Other works are in his head and perhaps going down on paper soon as he picks himself up and gets back in the game.Argo and spouse Mary--children having flown the nest--live in a small and snug community in San Diego where, like Voltaire, he's been there, learned some lessons and now tends his garden.
Read more from Ron Argo
The Courage to Kill Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Year of the Monkey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaby Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for The Sum of His Worth
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5“The Sum of his Worth” by Ron ArgoIn today’s day and age, we don’t think about the prejudices of races. Yes, there are some who do not get along with others, but we don’t worry about segregation and the beatings and killings associated with breaking the rules.“The Sum of his Worth” takes the reader on a journey when blacks and whites wouldn’t think about mixing in the south. Even though laws were trying to be changed to overcome these prejudices, there are those in the Deep South that refused to consider blacks anything but dispensable. Lynching was part of life for the white man in Alabama and Georgia. Sonny Poe—a sixteen-year-old—meets Dr. Joe, and they are two white guys in the heart of the south. Sonny already has friends from the neighboring town Ash, who are black. He doesn’t see a problem with it, but does understand how being seen with blacks could affect him and his friends. But Sonny is rebellious and refuses to treat blacks any differently than the whites and Dr. Joe is trying to change the way people think. And some people in the Alabama town consider that to be traitorous and go after both Sonny and Dr. Joe with killing on their minds. They group together the KKK and try to murder Sonny, Dr. Joe, and any black person who thinks to try to rise above their unfortunate status. Will Sonny and Dr. Joe both die trying to do what’s right?Argo has woven a story that unfortunately, was a little too close to the truth to think of as fiction. This well-written novel will have you gasping and flinching at the corruption and vileness. A very poignant novel, written in the voice of those of the 60s. Well done, Argo.Reviewed by Starr Gardinier Reina, author of “The Other Side: Melinda’s Story”