Review by Deborah K. Frontiera
If you have not read Sharon Kennedy’s first two in this series, The SideRoad Kids, and The SideRoad Kids: A Summer of Discovery, it won’t matter since the final volume has plenty of backstory to pull you into these characters as adults. It has been a while since I read the first two, but I fell right back into it. It is important though, to note that this volume is definitely NOT for young readers, which is stated plainly on the back cover.
The opening chapter of SideRoad Kids Book #3 is from “Flint’s” point of view, the oldest of the childhood bunch. As he returns from twelve years in the army and is given a ride from Sault Ste. Marie back to the “Side Road”, a neighbor fills him in on what’s been happening in the area. Through conversation and Flint’s recalling his mother’s letters, readers gain all the backstory they need. The next chapter is from Candy’s standpoint and is one big, long run-on sentence because that’s the way she was as a child and still is because she just talked, talked, talked all the time and we get what’s been going on through her eyes and all the miseries everybody has been living through … You’ll know her well by the end of that chapter, which is completely different in tone from Flint’s voice.
On the opposite side is Elizabeth, the “uppity rich” girl as a child who has learned a thing or two about humility. At her stepdad’s funeral, her story ponders how all of them have changed. The author’s careful use of voice makes readers feel as if they are drinking coffee with each character individually. All chapters are in first person, but we never forget who the narrator of the moment is because each one’s language is unique to that character. That’s hard to pull off as a writer. I’ve read several books with that set up in which I have had to flip back to the name at the start of a chapter to remind me whose head I was supposed to be in. Kudos to Sharron for getting it right!
Two of the saddest chapters were those of Blew and Daisy, who were sweet on each other from the time they were small children picking barriers together. A year fighting in Vietnam, while he survived it, left Blew an emotional mess as it did many young men of that era who went off to do their patriotic duty and came home broken in body or spirit or both. Meanwhile, Daisy grew outward from a timid child into a confident young woman. It broke my heart that Daisy grew apart from Blew, and that he and after surviving Vietnam, he dies in a car crash. I found myself thinking, Is everybody going to end up dead or messed up?
But amid life’s tragedies, hope lives on. Flint’s story is one of reconnection as “the old gang” gets together one Christmas for a hayride at Flint’s Uncle Leo’s farm. There’s lots of reminiscing as each of them feels “called home” by the Upper Peninsula. Flint, who also survived service in Vietnam, puts it this way on page 94:
“There’s a big wide world beyond this little peninsula we call home. After the war I traveled a bit, but whenever I tried to settle in one place, the call to return kept nagging me like a gal who wants to get married will nag a feller until he gives up and gives in. Those of us who were born here understand. This isn’t a magical place. It doesn’t have much to offer except acres of land and three of the Great Lakes. I thought about sailing on a freighter. I used to enjoy reading books about sailors and shipwrecks and ghosts haunting Davy Jones’ locker, but when I took a long, hard look at what I really wanted, I know it couldn’t be found on the water. What I wanted was right here.”
The SideRoad Kids Book #3 brought to mind a time when two childhood friends and I sat with our husbands talking about how all we wanted in high school was to get out of the little U.P. town we grew up in and then we spent most of our adulthood figuring out how to come back. That’s the way most of us are—ordinary people doing the best we can, messing up, trying to get our act together while idealizing our childhoods. Some get lost and others manage to find a way through. It’s hope in the midst of mess. It’s like Frank Sinatra’s song, “That’s Life”
The Side Road Kids: Life as U.P. Adults By Sharon M. Kennedy
ISBN 978-1-61599-828-9 Modern History Press 2024, paperback, ret. $19.95
