Owen helps John evade the draft by injuring his hand. John and Hester both oppose the war and are horrified. He enters the ROTC program at the University of New Hampshire, meaning he will go on active duty in Vietnam when he graduates. Owen is expelled from school because of his sarcastic attitude towards the headmaster.

Owen is doing well academically and is offered full scholarships to Yale and Harvard. At Owen’s insistence, John and Owen spend a lot of time practicing a basketball trick play in which John lifts Owen over his head to dunk the ball, an illegal maneuver they call The Shot. As the boys age, Owen becomes a respected member of the school community, writing a popular column for the school newspaper, and dating a much older girl, John’s cousin Hester. Dan helps the boys remain friends despite this tragedy, and Owen tells John he is convinced that he is â€›God’s instrument.’ Owen participates in a school production of A Christmas Carol and believes he sees his own name and date of death on Ebeneezer Scrooge’s gravestone. At a game, he hits a foul ball that strikes John’s mother in the head, killing her. Although very small, Owen loves baseball and plays Little League. He gives the boys a stuffed toy of which Owen is particularly fond. When John’s mother, who refuses to tell him who his father is, marries a man named Dan Needham, Dan works to gain both Owen and John’s trust. Owen prefers to spend time with John’s family. What happens to Owen-after that 1953 foul ball-is extraordinary and terrifying.As Owen and John work through their school days, John is impressed with Owen’s obvious intelligence. The boy who hit the ball doesn't believe in accidents Owen Meany believes he is God' s instrument.

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 his best friend' s mother. 'I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was ithe instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe ion God I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.' So begins John Irving's new novel.

The half-cloth book is in very good condition. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is a 543-page hardcover published in 1989 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

John irving's a prayer for