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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Boondocking through the lower 48?traveling by recreational vehicle from one temporary campsite to another?isn't exactly the American Dream, nor are the Vaeths the ideal family. They embark on this peripatetic lifestyle to keep their granddaughter, Rita, from her unstable father, Melvin, who accidently killed Rita's mother while driving under the influence of angel dust. Pulling up roots and leaving their ranch-style home in Baltimore wasn't the retirement the Vaeths had envisioned, but this rackety senior citizens' version of On The Road-meets-Travels with Charley has its peculiar charms. Rita thrives and decides to keep on moving, even after reuniting with her strange, disaffected father, now living in an Idaho survivalist compound. In this surprising gem of a first novel, Bauer (Working Women and Other Stories, LJ 8/95) writes with a fresh eye for the minutiae of everyday life, reminiscent of Barbara Kingsolver and Bobbie Ann Mason.?Jo Manning, formerly with Reader's Digest Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The promise of Bauer's quietly acute story collection, Working Women (1995), is movingly realized in this contemporary odyssey of a retired couple who journey with their young granddaughter through America amid upcropping dangers and fears. For 15 years on the road--that ``fast forward'' landscape of ``stores, campsites, road signs''--there are brief dockings within the convivial culture of the ``common backyard'' of the transient retired; painful touchdowns at old places that can still claim them; and repeated sightings of the detested son-in-law who has vowed to regain his daughter. Sylvia and factory worker Clayton had lived in their Maryland home for 31 years. Their only child, Janice, died when her husband Melvin, high on angel dust, crashed the car. The couple fought for and won custody of baby Rita, and so the trailer they'd bought for a vacation becomes a permanent home. For Sylvia, the old home and its possessions, empty of Janice, had been empty of meaning; now with Rita, even in a tiny space, there is ``proof that once we lived like everyone else,'' a family. There's an initial exhilaration and a sense of adventure that give way to the odd stability of motion. Sylvia and Clayton, though, have a more complex agenda than their retired peers, who seem to be attempting to outrun death. They must keep Rita safe from Melvin, a specter in pursuit. (Rita, wise at 12, fascinated but afraid, imagines him as an ant, scurrying over a map of the US.) Rita will dream of herself driving her grandparents ``to a country where they'd feel totally safe.'' When she's 16, Melvin is finally, successfully faced down, and, shorn of his demonic aura, vanishes. At the close, Rita, having learned something necessary about reality and the nature of love, goes on her own quest. A gentle tale of good people moving through a prosaic yet curiously charged landscape, giving new shading to the concepts of home and family. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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More About the Author
Tricia Bauer was born and grew up in Baltimore. She began writing as a young girl and later studied poetry before turning to fiction writing. Tricia has written for newspapers and magazines, and held editorial and marketing jobs with different children's book publishers. Her stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies throughout the U.S., and her travel features have been published in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.
Her first book, Working Women and Other Stories, was published in 1995 to critical acclaim. Boondocking was first published in hardcover in 1997, and was selected for the Discover Great New Writers program and named one of Library Journal's Best First Novels. Hollywood & Hardwood, her second novel, was published in the spring of 1999, and Shelterbelt followed in the fall of 2000.
Tricia was awarded the first annual FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for her novel Father Flashes, which will be published in March 2011 by Fiction Collective Two, an imprint of University of Alabama Press.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband, playwright Bill Bozzone, and their daughter Lia.
www.triciabauer.com
Her first book, Working Women and Other Stories, was published in 1995 to critical acclaim. Boondocking was first published in hardcover in 1997, and was selected for the Discover Great New Writers program and named one of Library Journal's Best First Novels. Hollywood & Hardwood, her second novel, was published in the spring of 1999, and Shelterbelt followed in the fall of 2000.
Tricia was awarded the first annual FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for her novel Father Flashes, which will be published in March 2011 by Fiction Collective Two, an imprint of University of Alabama Press.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband, playwright Bill Bozzone, and their daughter Lia.
www.triciabauer.com
Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An often hilarious, often heartbreaking road trip.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Boondocking: A Novel (Hardcover)
The characters in Tricia Bauer's wonderful novel make us laugh and break our hearts. Grandparents Sylvia and Clayton, with their grandaughter Rita in tow, set out in a travel trailer to avoid Rita's dangerous and unstable father. What follows is not simply a tale of suspence as the trio seems to always stay one step ahead of their pursuer, but a fable about growing up in modern-day America. Bauer's voice is strong and certain and the love she shows for her characters is always in evidence. Boondocking is a hard book to put down and one you wish could, like the trailer itself, just continue on and on.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What grandparents do for their grandbabies,
By
This review is from: Boondocking: A Novel (Hardcover)
The message of this story is of love for your children's children. How tragic it is for Sylvia and Clayton when their daughter dies and they suspect their son in law behind it all. Attempting to spare their dear grandchild, they hitch up an RV and off they go in their desperate attempt to separate their grandchild from the pursuing son-in law.Eventually, after many adventures on the road in an RV trailer, they must make amends and their grandchild has grown and the questions and curiosities need to be examined. After years of trailering and dodging the inevitable, they must make peace with the past, and look to the future together.
0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It made me uneasy,
By A Customer
This review is from: Boondocking (Paperback)
I felt as though I was missing something all the way through the book. Maybe we have become insensitive, but I felt as though they were running from some horrific murder, when really it was a car accident. I know drugs were involved, but I felt the daughter must have been aware of the drug use and put herself in that situation. Also, as a person in my early thirties, I didn't understand the paranoia they felt. I was really disappointed in the end when she slept with a man, it was totally uncharacteristic for her.
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