Boondocking: A Novel - Hardcover

Bauer, Tricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1882593197 ISBN 13: 9781882593194

Publisher: Bridge Works, 1997

Synopsis

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About this title

From the Inside Flap

Boondocking is a story of commitment and love, and at the same time a look into a world little written about -- the world of boondocking, finding beauty and excitement in a vanishing rural America in a rig with a trailer towed behind.

Reviews

The promise of Bauer's quietly acute story collection, Working Women (1995), is movingly realized in this contemporary odyssey of a retired couple who journey with their young granddaughter through America amid upcropping dangers and fears. For 15 years on the road--that ``fast forward'' landscape of ``stores, campsites, road signs''--there are brief dockings within the convivial culture of the ``common backyard'' of the transient retired; painful touchdowns at old places that can still claim them; and repeated sightings of the detested son-in-law who has vowed to regain his daughter. Sylvia and factory worker Clayton had lived in their Maryland home for 31 years. Their only child, Janice, died when her husband Melvin, high on angel dust, crashed the car. The couple fought for and won custody of baby Rita, and so the trailer they'd bought for a vacation becomes a permanent home. For Sylvia, the old home and its possessions, empty of Janice, had been empty of meaning; now with Rita, even in a tiny space, there is ``proof that once we lived like everyone else,'' a family. There's an initial exhilaration and a sense of adventure that give way to the odd stability of motion. Sylvia and Clayton, though, have a more complex agenda than their retired peers, who seem to be attempting to outrun death. They must keep Rita safe from Melvin, a specter in pursuit. (Rita, wise at 12, fascinated but afraid, imagines him as an ant, scurrying over a map of the US.) Rita will dream of herself driving her grandparents ``to a country where they'd feel totally safe.'' When she's 16, Melvin is finally, successfully faced down, and, shorn of his demonic aura, vanishes. At the close, Rita, having learned something necessary about reality and the nature of love, goes on her own quest. A gentle tale of good people moving through a prosaic yet curiously charged landscape, giving new shading to the concepts of home and family. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Boondocking through the lower 48?traveling by recreational vehicle from one temporary campsite to another?isn't exactly the American Dream, nor are the Vaeths the ideal family. They embark on this peripatetic lifestyle to keep their granddaughter, Rita, from her unstable father, Melvin, who accidently killed Rita's mother while driving under the influence of angel dust. Pulling up roots and leaving their ranch-style home in Baltimore wasn't the retirement the Vaeths had envisioned, but this rackety senior citizens' version of On The Road-meets-Travels with Charley has its peculiar charms. Rita thrives and decides to keep on moving, even after reuniting with her strange, disaffected father, now living in an Idaho survivalist compound. In this surprising gem of a first novel, Bauer (Working Women and Other Stories, LJ 8/95) writes with a fresh eye for the minutiae of everyday life, reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver and Bobbie Ann Mason.?Jo Manning, formerly with Reader's Digest Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bridge Works
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1882593197
• ISBN 13: 9781882593194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 227