- 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 the instrument of my mother"s death, 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 the other boy"s mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn"t believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God"s instrument. What happens to Owen, after that 1953 foul ball, is extraordinary.