Review by Jon C. Stott
Although Melville in Moby-Dick “Sailed the seven seas,” Whitman in Leaves of Grass embraced the entire United States, and Jack Kerouac in On the Road crisscrossed and re-crisscrossed the continent, many important American writers have explored their themes by setting their characters in specific locations. One thinks of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and Faulkner’s many short stories set in Yoknapatawfa County. The lives of their characters are in many ways shaped by the places in which they grew up. The United States is made up of many small regions and so many authors explore life in them.
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is not just a region, it is a place with many smaller regions, each with its unique culture, the lives of the people shaped by local history and geography. Three collections which celebrate specific regions are Robert Travers’ Danny and the Boys, a bunch of humorous stories about a group of ne’er do wells living north of the Ishpeming Area. Terri Martin, most recently in Road Kill Justice, sets her stories in the fictional town of Budworm (near Baraga).
In three books, Sharon Kennedy has portrayed the lives of children growing up on the SideRoad, a rural area near Sault Ste Marie, The first book, The SideRoad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County is on one level, a typical children’s book, filled with friendships, quarrels, and fun and games, although there are subtle undercurrents suggesting that this childhood world is sometimes far from happy. The troubles in the characters’ lives come to the surface in The SideRoad Kids: A Sumer of Discovery. During what should be the carefree times of summer, many of the characters struggle emotionally when they discover the dark secrets in their families. The first book can easily be read by most upper elementary school readers; the second, by more sensitive, and a little older, readers.
The latest in the series, The SideRoad Kids: Life as U.P. Adults is definitely not for children. The darkness that was hinted in the first book and emerged in the second, dominates the third casting sorrow and tragedy over the “kids” in their lives after high school graduation. Many of the stories are set in the later 1960s, when the war in far off Viet Nam effected so many lives in what could be called a tiny “back-water” region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
The book contains the stories of nine of the characters who had been featured in the earlier collections. Their stories are deeply troubling. Rejected in love, a boy hangs himself on the night of his high school graduation; a young woman runs away with a smooth-talking southerner and discovers with sorrow the consequences of her reckless actions; shattered by his Viet Nam experiences, a young man at home on leave drives drunkenly into a tree and dies; good “good, stable” girl, filled with guilt because of the suicide of her friend and distraught because of the terrible events in the country and around the world, becomes a restless, wandering alcoholic.
The stories contain many departures from the SideRoad and few returns. The characters confront the question, “Can you go home again?” The answer seems to be seldom, if ever, and if you do, you will not be the SideRoad kid you once were. The world of the 1960s, especially the one that exists beyond the SideRoad but intrudes upon, it will see to that.
Sharon Kennedy, who grew up on the “SideRoad” has drawn on elements of her own life there and the lives of friends and family to create a collection of stories that is sorrowful and profound. She makes no apologies for the mistakes her characters make but she presents the once-kids with love and sympathy. It presents a moving view and, in many ways, a sharp criticism of a period of American history that will be foreign to many readers. That does not mean they should not read it. To those who were there or knew others who were, it will be a reminder of the way things were, even in such remote places as “the SideRoad.”
The SideRoad Kids, Book Three is not an easy read; it is a deeply troubling one. But it a very well-told, moving group of stories that should be read slowly and thoughtfully – and then reread.
–Jon C. Stott, author of Paul Bunyan in Michigan
Sharon M. Kennedy
The SideRoad Kids Book 3: Life as U.P. Adults
Ann Arbor, MI: Modern History Press, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-61599-828-9
