Coming of Age in Sewickley: Boys — Former Point Park Professor Looks at How to be a Man

In his debut novel, City of Clans, University of Pittsburgh master of fine arts grad and former Point Park professor Geoff Peck uses Pittsburgh’s 2009 G-20 summit as a tonal backdrop for a millennial coming-of-age tale. We get the first-person scoop from Jeremy “Big Jerm” Starcevic, a recent Sewickley Academy graduate who moves in with his best bud, Scott “Scotty Ballgame” Melloy. The son of a World Series-winning catcher for the Pirates nicknamed “Bulldog,” Jeremy finds himself immersed in all the habits of boys his age.

City of Clans succeeds less because of its pitch-perfect portrayals of young men trying to find their lanes in the adult world, and more from the conflicts that arise during the journey. From the boundaries of loyalty to the single-minded pursuit of good times, Peck is well aware of these “reasons to be,” which seldom consider the feelings of others. Peck is also adept at showing Jeremy as someone capable of change, a character who is more self-aware than he lets on, especially around Scott and Bulldog. As the son of a jock, “Jeremy also understood early on that there was a code you had to live by, not just for baseball, but for being male, and that as a child, he wasn’t measuring up.”

Male friendships are often built on the unspoken willingness to stick up for one’s “boys.” In a crucial flashback to a basketball practice where the coach calls out Jeremy for playing like “a tampon,” Scott shows his mettle when an upperclassman won’t let it go in the locker room. Scott wears the badge of protector with pride.

Thankfully, things get balanced out when Carnegie Mellon University photography major Kat Kovacs steps into multiple scenes. Though she comes off as too “big sister” to Jeremy, she also sees his potential to be something more than a sidekick of Scott’s, whom she loathes.

City of Clans lands the way Jeremy wants his father to understand him: “I didn’t want all those cliches. … I wanted the complicated stuff in there too.”

City of Clans by Geoff Peck. University of Iowa Press. $19.00.