The Way the Family Got Away
Info
Author
Michael Kimball
Published
July 18, 2009
Purchase on Amazon.com
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Their family has suffered the loss of a baby and they
all set out on a cross-country drive with the embalmed infant in the
trunk of their car. They're heading from rural Texas to Michigan to get
to "Bompa's" house. The children, through their childish perceptions
(nurses are "angels" and such), try to make sense of love, loss and
death. The family falls apart as the story moves along. The narrators
alternate by chapter between the boy and the girl. He explains how the
father and mother trade all that they own to get from small town to
small town ("America gets emptier the farther away you go up into it,"
he says at one point). She has a family of dolls and is often confused
about the difference between what's real and what's not, and after a
while, you'll find yourself in the same shape. I know I was. It's a
disturbing novel, a tough little read, but worthwhile.
