Okay for Now

This is an overview of the first edition of Okay for Now, a humorous Young Adult novel by award-winning author, Gary D. Schmidt. Published in 2011, this children’s novel was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People’s literature. Other works by Schmidt include Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (2004), The Wednesday Wars (2007), and The Labors of Hercules Beal (2023).

Plot Summary

Doug Swieteck, a middle schooler, is the child of an abusive, alcoholic father with two abusive, trouble-maker brothers, Christopher and Lucas. Doug’s soul comfort is making his mother, an avid homemaker and gardener, smile. Doug relates that his most prized possession came from Joe Pepitone, a major league baseball player who visited Doug’s high school and left him his baseball cap. Christopher quickly stole the hat and passed it around to his friends, devastating Doug. As the story opens, Doug’s father loses his job, forcing the family to move to Marysville, New York. Doug’s mother breaks up her beloved garden plot, and Doug’s best friend, Holling Hoodhood, gives him Joe Pepitone’s jacket as a parting gift. Doug’s mother worries that when Lucas returns from fighting in Vietnam, there will be no room for him in their new, smaller home.

At Marysville, Doug meets Lil, the daughter of a local deli, and he begins making deliveries for her father. On one such delivery, he meets and befriends the eccentric writer, Mrs. Windemere. He also visits the library regularly, where an illustrated book of birds by John J Audubon is kept behind glass. Under the tutelage of a worker there, Mr. Powell, Doug begins learning to draw and paint the birds. Doug is sad to learn that the library is cutting pictures out of the book and selling them off. By the end of the novel, Doug retrieves all of the pages from their respective owners and returns them to the library.

Despite some suspicion surrounding Doug because of Christopher’s supposed crimes, Doug finds acceptance at school from certain teachers, like Mr. Ferriss and Miss Cowper, the latter even teaching him to read. Doug’s gym teacher, however, torments him and eventually rips Doug’s shirt off when he refuses to play on the “skins” team, revealing a tattoo that Doug’s father gave him to humiliate him: a chest tattoo that reads “Mama’s Baby.”

During a work function, Doug’s father anticipates winning a Babe Ruth trivia contest, but Doug wins along with his teammate, and the company’s owner, Mr. Ballard. Later, Mr. Ballard gives Doug’s father Doug’s winnings, a signed baseball and $100, but Doug never receives these rewards. Christopher steals the baseball out of his father’s truck and gives it to Doug, cementing Doug’s opinion that Christopher isn’t actually all bad and isn’t to blame for Marysville’s recent string of break-ins.

Meanwhile, Lucas returns from Vietnam with post-traumatic stress disorder, partial blindness, and his legs have been amputated from the knee. He struggles to find work in Marysville, but he becomes an assistant coach at the end of the novel when Doug connects him with his gym teacher, who also suffers from PTSD. After another break-in, the police arrest Christopher, but it’s clear to Doug that he’s innocent, and his father’s drinking buddy, Ernie Eco, is the culprit. Ernie appears in public wearing Doug’s prized Joe Pepitone jacket, stolen by Doug’s father. Doug’s father, in an uncharacteristically selfless act, tips off the police, freeing Christopher. He also returns Doug’s jacket.

At the novel’s climax, Mrs. Windemere has Doug and Lil (who is now Doug’s girlfriend), act in her new play about Jane Eyre. Doug is supposed to have a minor role, but he must play Jane when Lil becomes ill just before the performance. Doug performs well, despite his fears that audience member Joe Pepitone will look down on him for playing a woman. Later, Joe asks Doug for his autograph, and Doug thanks him for being his inspiration. Following the play, Lil has developed a potentially terminal illness. The novel ends ambiguously with Joe climbing into her hospital bed and swearing that he hears the beat of the wings from Audubon’s Artic Tern.

The coming-of-age novel deals with complex issues, like alcoholism, cycles of abuse, and class prejudice. The novel’s message is one of hope, as Doug transforms from an apathetic “skinny thug” into a determined student who encourages those around him to try. Still, Schmidt doesn’t oversimplify the end result.