Raising Wrecker
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
After foster-parenting four young siblings a decade ago, Summer Wood
tried to imagine a place where kids who are left alone or taken from
their families would find the love and the family they deserve. For her,
fiction was the tool to realize that world, and Wrecker, the central
character in her second novel, is the abandoned child for whom life
turns around in most unexpected ways. It's June of 1965 when Wrecker
enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is
tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker's birth mother, is
knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can
barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she's in
prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he's
shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt
County, California. When he arrives he's scared and angry, exploding at
the least thing, and quick to flee. Wrecker is the story of this
boy and the motley group of isolated eccentrics who come together to
raise him and become a family along the way.
For readers taken with the special boy at the center of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Wrecker will be a welcome companion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Mexico author Wood follows Arroyo with this affecting novel about the rearing of a lovable boy named Wrecker (for his destructive tendencies), who carries the scars of being abandoned at age 3 when his penniless, clueless mother, Lisa Fay, went to prison for drugs. It's early 1969 when Wrecker's uncle, Len, whose wife is brain damaged from an infection, becomes aware of the heft of his guardianship responsibilities as he cares for Wrecker at the Bow Farm hippie commune on the Lost Coast section of Northern California. To "help him go forward," the eccentric residents young, no-nonsense Southern belle Melody; plaid-clad mother-hen Ruthie; and independent, "short and furry" Johnny Appleseed of this unconventional cloister take Wrecker into their collective arms. Wrecker is confused and troublesome, and over the years often runs away, but eventually comes to appreciate his alternative family. Complications emerge with a hasty adoption, Len's wife's pneumonia, Wrecker's burgeoning adolescence, and his estranged mother's eagerness to reclaim her teenage son when she's released from prison after almost 15 years, just as Wrecker might be moving past his need to reunite with her. Wood (who was inspired by her own fostering experiences) succeeds with surefooted prose; a lush, earthy California backdrop; and a sensitive story of nurturing and family.
