The Tongues of Angels is an emotional story that tells how the life of a young boy changes a man forever. Reynolds Price tells the story through Bridge Boatner, a painter who recently lost his father. Bridge is given a job at Juniper, a summer camp, where he meets a fourteen year old boy named Rafe who teaches him lessons in life and changes the way his lives his. The author takes great care to show the depth of feelings that Bridge held towards Rafe and the things he learned from him, and their relationship become a very significant part of the book. The setting was also a major part of this story. Price wove a very vivid picture, making such a idyllic summer camp environment that it seemed very believable that such life altering events would occur here.
The entire novel centers around Bridge's relationship with Rafe. Bridge learns many things from his involvement with Rafe. Bridge was having a difficult time dealing with his father's death. The memories of it plagued him and he would have terrible hallucinations about it. He learned to move past it from Rafe. He realized that he could move on when he learned that Rafe"s history with death was much more violent and disturbing than his own, and that the boy had been able to become such an awesome person in spite of it. When Rafe was younger his mother was raped and killed right in front of him. Bridge's sympathy for Rafe and his urges to protect him seemed to take the place of his own grief. At one point Rafe pulls his iv (intravenous glucose) out of his arm while he was in a hospital (109). Normally this would send Bridge into a terrible fit as his remembered his father doing the same thing, but instead he calmly calls for a nurse. After being around Rafe for the camping session, the thought of his father no longer tormented Bridge.
Rafe also taught him subtler lessons, such as never leaving someone you care about. Bridge made this mistake twice in the book, each time he hurt Rafe.