Take Me with You

Warning, this book is way off our genre. Author Catherine Ryan Hyde wrote Pay It Forward, and this is another story about a surprising good deed, which eventually multiplies, but not without significant heart-wrenching hiccups along the way. August Shroeder is a high school science teacher from San Diego who is driving his RV to Yellowstone to bury some of the ashes of his 19-year-old son, Phillip, who was killed while his wife, Maggie, was driving. August and Maggie are both alcoholics. Her blood alcohol level was under the legal limit, but he noted she always had alcohol on board. He thought she should have looked left and right before she went through the intersection when another driver ran the red light and killed Phillip. It was the death of his son that got him to go to AA and stay sober for the last 19 months. Never able to forgive Maggie, by the time the trip began, they were divorced and August had 19 months of sobriety.

August always took the summer off to travel the country, and he Phillip had planned a trip to Yellowstone, and now August was doing it alone with the burial ashes in his glove box. But, his old RV broke down and the cost of the repairs were eating up the money he had left in his budget for the trip, so he was going to have to cut the trip short. But, the mechanic in the California desert town offered to do the job for free if August would agree to take his sons on the trip, because he was about to go to jail for 90 days on what he claimed was a check-kiting charge. Reluctantly, after seeing what good boys they were, August agreed. But the mechanic was an alcoholic and a liar – there’s a surprise. It was his 4^th DUI, not a check-kiting charge, and he was going to jail for six months.

12 year-old Seth and 7-year-old Henry were excited to get out of the little desert town that they never left before, and they were hungry for a relationship with a man who was sober. Given their dad’s continued drinking after he was released from prison, the ongoing relationship between the boys and August was difficult, but it did continue for many years. This is their story. The author obviously knows about AA and she presented that well, and she effectively captured the childhood trauma that is inflicted by having such an alcoholic parent.