A Prayer for Owen Meany

Danny writes:

In the book A Prayer for Owen Meany, a boy named Johnny Wheelwright is revisiting his past with his best friend, Owen Meany, and his deceased mother. When his mother died, Johnny still didn’t know who his father was despite how many times he asked her. She met his father on the Boston & Maine train that took her to her singing lessons that she only missed three times since he was born. Shortly after she met Johnny’s father, she conceived Johnny and during her pregnancy, Johnny’s father left. However, Johnny’s mother (Tabitha) met another man on the train that went to Harvard and was a teacher named Daniel Needham that she really did love. Johnny’s mother was beautiful, had a slim figure, and was a sweater girl. Everyone admired her for her looks and kindness, including Owen Meany. He was a very small, religious, and studious kid. He was so short in fact that he “was so small that not only did his feet not touch the floor when he sat in his chair—his knees did not extend to the edge of his seat; therefore his legs stuck out straight, like the legs of a doll.” In Sunday school, the whole class picked him up and passed him around the room. Although he hated that aspect of Sunday school, he was very religious and had very outspoken thoughts about religion such as “a person’s faith goes at its own pace,” that a group can’t ever all be ready to sing, prayer and stand at the same time. He is very studious and does great in school. He’s almost like a son to Johnny’s mom, so she always said that he should go to Gravesend Academy with Johnny, but he always never wanted to go because he said it wasn’t a place for him.

As far as the plot goes, it starts to begin during the end of the 1st chapter, on about page 35. It is Owen and Johnny’s last year of Little League, a year to be looked forward to according to Johnny, and the game is nearing its end. Owen is being substituted in for Johnny’s place in the line up and he steps up to the plate. Johnny’s mother just arrived to the game and she walked down behind the backstop and was waving to someone in the bleachers. Owen had just taken his first ball, and now the pitcher was winding up again. He threw the ball and Owen swung very hard, fouling the ball behind him right into Johnny’s mother’s left temple, knocking her out, killing her before she even hit the ground on her fall. Owen was so ashamed and devastated of this moment that immediately, he jumped on his bike and rode home. Just before he left, he screamed to Johnny with his strange, awkward voice, “’I’M SORRY!’” This is as far as I have read in the book, but according to the summary on the book, something “extraordinary and terrifying” happens to Owen Meany. This is intriguing to me, so I’m anticipating the rest of the book.