Nodine creates memorable characters in new book
Kevin, the narrator of this road trip novel, lives in Burbank, Calif. Kevin is a blind man (he lost his sight in a childhood accident) who calls his white cane “Charlie,” is a former crackhead, favors cowboy hats and lives in a sort of group home. It’s the summer of 2005, and Kevin has just lost his job. He hates to go home where he will face his “family.” “Before we left California, we lived in a hogepodge of a house where you couldn’t get anywhere without walking around something else,” the tale begins.
TOUCH AND GO
By Thad Nodine
Unbridled Books,
$16.95 softcover
Kevin, the narrator of this road trip novel, lives in Burbank, Calif. Kevin is a blind man (he lost his sight in a childhood accident) who calls his white cane “Charlie,” is a former crackhead, favors cowboy hats and lives in a sort of group home. It’s the summer of 2005, and Kevin has just lost his job. He hates to go home where he will face his “family.”
“Before we left California, we lived in a hogepodge of a house where you couldn’t get anywhere without walking around something else,” the tale begins. That’s how Kevin lives, both physically as a blind man and emotionally as someone who has run from his own life straight into addiction. He went through rehab and was sent to live with a couple, Patrick and Isa, who are also foster parents to two young boys, Devon, a teenager, and Ray, 12.
Patrick is a bit of a n’er do well. “Patrick was thirty-eight and was always trying pyramid schemes and so-called business investments to get rich quick.” Patrick is a bit of a bully who dominates the family most of the time. The oldest boy, Devon, is a mixed race child whose mother is in prison. Ray is Hispanic. Isa is a dreamy sort. Certainly Kevin dreams of her. He lusts after her, but works to hide it from Patrick.
Kevin loses his job writing part-time for the newspaper. Isa’s dad back in her hometown of Pensacola, Fla., is old and ailing. He’s also loaded, so Patrick and Isa want to get on his good side. Isa’s father’s fondest wish is to have a custom coffin in which his mortal remains may rest for eternity. It has to be wood, so one day Patrick comes home with something. “It was a massive box of some kind. Almost up to my waist. Wooden. With carved patterns on the side.”
It’s a handmade casket.
The plan is to put it on top of the family car and deliver it Isa’s father. So they seal the casket in duct tape and canvas, hoist it on top of the car and set off for Florida from California, the blind and unemployed Kevin, the object of Kevin’s lust, Isa, her husband, the bullying and possibly violent Patrick, the mouthy teenager Devon and the sweet yet troubled Ray. So they pack up everything, fasten their burden to the top of the car and pile in. They’re off in a beat-up old station wagon with no air-conditioning and miles and miles of desert ahead. Remember, it’s summer. It’s 2005 and they’re headed across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama into Florida. What could go wrong? They might hit a storm. They might hit THE storm.
“We have to slow down plenty between Lafayette and Baton Rouge, we had to stop several times, and it was worse along I-12,” Kevin observes.
Of course Katrina plays a part in this story, but that’s well into the story, long after a series of comic mishaps strands them in West Texas for days and leads them to another group of people who are about as strange as they are. Nodine keeps the plot moving along, however, and the story progresses as quickly as a storm sliding across the Gulf. Even though the plot is sometimes funny, sometimes scary and often full of surprises, this is really a character-driven tale told in a literary style. Kevin’s character is a vivid depiction of a man who has a disability that he has not quite accepted. Both Patrick and Isa are memorable, but Devon and Ray are even more vivid. You will sometimes love them all and sometimes hate them, but you won’t find them boring.