The Sledding Hill

The Sledding Hill (2005), a young adult novel by Chris Crutcher, follows protagonist Eddie Proffit as he struggles to cope with the sudden loss of both his father and his best friend to freakish accidents within a few weeks of one another. The story is told by his deceased best friend, Billy Bartholomew. After his death, Billy, continuing to feel an obligation to Eddie, decides to help him deal with the aftermath of the deaths. Aside from its story-within-a-story structure, The Sledding Hill is in many ways a traditional coming of age tale: its protagonist is faced with a significant obstacle to his psychological development which he overcomes, and in the process, ensuring a place in his community. The novel is notable for Crutcher's unusual choice to include himself as a character within the story; his literary cameo comes at a pivotal point in the plot, which involves his defending the right of adolescents to read contentious fiction.

The summer before his first year of high school in Bear Creek, Idaho, Eddie Proffit suffers two great tragedies. First, he loses his father in a bizarre work-related accident involving an exploding truck tire, and then, less than a month later, he discovers his best friend, Billy Bartholomew dead under a fallen slab of stone. Eddie is intelligent but prone to “high-speed randomness.” His flighty nature and difficulty concentrating seem to imply that he suffers from ADHD – those around him, however, treat him as if he were stupid or simply a troublemaker. With the only two people in town who recognized his intelligence dead, Eddie becomes selectively mute.

Not long after he discovers Billy's dead body, Eddie begins to receive visitations from Billy's spirit. At first, unnerved by the visitations, he doesn't believe it's really Billy. Billy persists in trying to communicate with Eddie, even slipping into his dreams. In these dreams, Billy brings Eddie to the hill where they often used to go sledding. Over time, Eddie comes to accept that the visitations are genuine. However, he still refuses to speak to anyone else.



Meanwhile, Eddie's mother has tried to console herself for the loss of her husband by becoming deeply involved in the local fundamentalist church, the Red Brick Church, run by Reverend Tarter, who is also an English teacher at Eddie's high school. He sees Eddie's behavior as proof that he needs to accept Jesus to be saved. Suspicious of the idea, Eddie acquiesces to taking baptism classes.

As his freshman year begins, Eddie is still not speaking to anyone. However, he makes an exception after developing a friendship with the janitor, who is Billy's father. They meet in the janitor's closet in secret; there, he and Billy's father bond over their shared experiences of grief and loss. Eddie enrolls in an elective class “Really Modern English” taught by the librarian, Ms. Lloyd. She assigns a book by “little-known author Chris Crutcher” called Warren Peece. Eddie likes the book, whose misfit characters make him “feel less lonely,” but Reverend Tarter despises its language and themes – which include homosexuality and abortion – and agitates for it to be banned. After the book is banned, however, Eddie convinces Billy's father to read the book to students in the boiler room.

Eventually, the school board schedules a hearing on the topic of Warren Peece, to consider whether it should, in fact, be banned. Chris Crutcher speaks in defense of the book. At the hearing, several students who have been moved by the book make confessions – one student comes out as gay, another admits to self-harming. Eddie comes to realize that, to defend the book that has come to mean so much to him, he will have to literally and figuratively find his voice to speak out in its defense.



After successfully arguing in favor of the right of adolescents to read “inappropriate” literature, Eddie's life begins to improve. His social life, in particular, improves after he finds his voice; there is even the promise of romance. Billy, seeing Eddie flourishing, realizes that Eddie no longer needs his help. After saying goodbye, Billy departs finally from the living realm.

Crutcher's novel explores many important themes: death and grief, the supernatural, fundamentalist religion, the role of literature in adolescents' personal development, and the problem of censorship. The novel also, by inserting the author into the action of the book, seems meant as a direct rebuttal to former critics of Crutcher's fiction who have asserted, for example, that he uses inappropriate language, or includes themes in his novels that are unsuitable for his readership. By dramatizing his own struggles with censorship, Crutcher adds a new dimension to an old debate.