John’s mother became pregnant with him after she had a fling with a man she met on the train to Boston, where she took singing lessons once a week. The town thinks that Owen was stunted from his exposure to so much granite dust when he was born, but Owen believes his unusual size and voice come from God. He also has a strange voice that sounds like a permanent high-pitched scream whenever he speaks. In Sunday school, the kids make a game of picking up the weightless Owen and passing him around overhead, because he is so much smaller than the rest of his peers. The two boys attend to Sunday school together, since John’s mother, Tabitha Wheelwright, recently decided that they will switch to Owen’s church. Owen grows up in a poor working-class household, and lives in his family’s granite quarry. John comes from one of the town’s founding families, and grows up in a traditionally dignified, well-to-do household with servants and a large family fortune. John and Owen grow up as best friends in the small New England town of Gravesend, New Hampshire. The present-day timeline of the book spans from January to September, as John weaves his childhood memories of growing up in New Hampshire with an account of his life today in Canada. John Wheelwright, an American living in Toronto in 1987, tells the story of his life as he explains how he became a Christian because of his childhood friend Owen Meany.

A prayer for owen meany by john irving