Heck Superhero [Hardcover]

Thirteen-year-old Heck (short for Hector) has a Theory of Everything. As he sees it, a Good Deed-any act of kindness or generosity-has the power to change his ‘microverse’, which is to say, the real, ordinary dimension Heck lives in when he’s not his secret superhero self. Heck has a rich imagination, and moreover, he’s a warm, decent boy, whose difficult personal life makes it natural for him to want to believe that he has the ability to help himself and those he loves simply by performing Good Deeds. The Good Deed, imagines Heck, tips the balance towards the good. It makes good things happen.
What would Heck like to see happen? For one thing, he’d like to find his missing mother. After being evicted from their apartment for late payment of rent, she had phoned Heck at his friend Spence’s house. She had told him to ask Spence’s parents to let him stay there for a few days until she managed to straighten things out. Heck agreed but then decided against alerting Spence’s parents to the fact that his mother has lost their lodgings. Always protective of his fragile and vulnerable mother, Heck never wants to take a risk, even with well-meaning people like his best friend’s parents. He’s afraid they might contact family-child services and that he’d end up in a foster home.
Instead of staying at Spence’s house, Heck sets out to find his mother. He knows full well what can happen when she feels overwhelmed and unable to cope. She retreats into herself, gets lost in ‘hypertime’. “[Heck] had to get her out of hypertime, keep her from thinking crazy stuff like that he was better off without her or something. He had to talk to her before she floated like a dry leaf right out of this dimension.” Throughout her book, Martine Leavitt manages to convey with sensitivity and literary grace her young protagonist’s understanding of his mother’s psychological frailty, his painful awareness that she could lose her sanity altogether.
Three days after the phonecall, Heck’s mother seems entirely out of reach. She hasn’t called again. She isn’t at the restaurant where she has been working. Heck discovers she was fired. She isn’t at her girlfriend’s place. She isn’t staying with her male friend. Nor, Heck has finally determined, is she at the local women’s shelter. Meanwhile, Heck has been sleeping in a parked car, cold and getting grubbier by the day. He has been suffering the terrible discomfort of aching teeth. Because of the constant pain in his mouth, he risked taking a ‘pill’ which he knew could fry his brains. He has been arrested and questioned by the police for a minor misdemeanor he didn’t actually commit. And to make matters worse, the landlord refuses to grant him access to his apartment so that he can retrieve his portfolio with all of the term’s art assignments, due to be handed in by the end of the week. In three days, Heck’s life has gone from difficult to near unbearable, and this despite the many Good Deeds he has been doing-like helping a lost child find her mother, giving $20.00 to a teenaged girl because Heck thought she needed the money, and cleaning up in the halls of his apartment building without being asked.
Despite his many difficulties, Heck, like the ‘superhero’ he is, insists on battling the forces of evil in his life alone. He refuses to accompany Spence to his home and ask for his parents’ assistance. When Heck’s concerned art teacher comes to pick him up from the police station, he won’t reveal, despite the man’s genuine desire to help, the extent of his troubles. It is only after he witnesses the suicide of another teen that he breaks down, and allows himself to be just a thirteen-year-old who needs others to intervene on his behalf. Leavitt has created a character who is impossible not to like-a boy trying with all his might to be a man. And the world he inhabits is all too familiar in its capacity to ruin the lives of children and adults. The following is another example of Leavitt’s superb writing. Leavitt gives us Heck’s unfocused yet perceptive reflections after he has swallowed an ecstasy-like drug and is drifting through downtown in search of his mother:

"Now there were the million-dollar people and the people who slept under trees and on partk benches. Now there were the BMWs and the shopping carts; the ones who had memberships to fitness clubs and the ones who walked all day; the ones who dined out and the ones who dined outside. Now there was the topworld and there was the bottoworld.
Heck loved them all, and why shouldn’t he, muscled up as he was, powered up, coming off the pages, shoulders above his chin, layered chest, narrow four-paneled abdomen. Why shouldn’t he love them, his poor mortal mother among them, when he could see that they must live here under the shadowed towers of Metropolis, in one time and one dimension, and all the evil on the streets hiding in cracks and holes.
Heck moved in frames now, one frame to another, like in a comic strip, and under his feet were words leading him to his destiny as a force for good in the world. He remembered he was supposed to be going to Dierdre’s, but he’d forgotten where that was."
Olga Stein (Books in Canada)

Grade 6-9–While Heck, a talented artist and cartoonist, is spending the evening with his best friend, his single mom goes into "hypertime," a place where she never has to assume adult responsibilities. Once again, the 13-year-old assumes his role as superhero. Unfortunately, the causes of his mother's breakdown are beyond his control; she's lost her waitress job and they've been evicted from their apartment. He searches for her for three days, trying to do the Good Deeds that he hopes will allow him to find her. He struggles with a severe toothache, sleeps in a car, and tries to earn money for food. The climax comes after Heck befriends 18-year-old Marion Ewald, who is determined to release the "pocket creatures" that he thinks live in his jacket to their own planet. After the older boy jumps to his death, Heck finds his mother in the hospital and reminds her that he is not a superhero but a boy who also needs help. The help begins to come. Heck is a likable, resourceful character, trying to do the right thing in almost untenable situations. Secondary characters are also well developed. Most of the adults are supportive, willing to help, though largely uninformed. Most notable is the depiction of Heck's art teacher, who recognizes the boy's talent as well as his problems and provides subtle, sympathetic support. Credible characters are placed in recognizable situations to create a poignant, fast-paced, and believable look at homelessness, mental illness, and the way one boy copes with their impact.–Maria B. Salvadore, formerly at District of Columbia Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.