A Prayer for Owen Meany

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest personI ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother'sdeath, but because he is the reason I believe in God;I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys--best friends--are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills theother boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe inaccidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. Whathappens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary.