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Running Away With Frannie

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Sam Segretti is a drifter. At 25, he's been to six colleges in as many years and worked as a "'mail carrier, factory drudge, mill hunk, roofer, hospital orderly, and Chuckles the Clown, to name a few.'" In a chance encounter at a West Virginia truck stop, Sam's path crosses that of Frannie, another nomad (whose big feet, she claims, are a sign that she is destined to be a wanderer, that --- as she says --- "I'll find my truth through where my feet take me.'"). Impulsive, reckless, impossibly quirky and breathtakingly beautiful, Frannie bewitches Sam from the moment he first sees her, and almost before he knows it, he has invited Frannie (a waitress who has just been fired for flushing a potato down the men's room's toilet) along on his travels.

The two land in the small town of Pineview, North Carolina, where Frannie gets another waitressing job, and Sam works first at the local furniture factory and later as a cab driver. As they gradually become enmeshed in small-town life, Frannie and Sam also learn more about each other, falling in love all the while. For Sam, the desire to marry Frannie and settle down in one place is a foreign feeling but one that he trusts implicitly, even as he learns more about Frannie's troubling past, including her schizophrenic brother and her propensity to leave boyfriends abruptly without a trace. Frannie herself also exhibits some unsettling tendencies --- what might pass for quirkiness might also be signs of deeper instability. Frannie's odd fixations, her periods of melancholy, her fear of commitment --- Sam is able to overlook all these things because he loves Frannie, plain and simple.

When the two finally marry and have a child, the extent of Frannie's volatility becomes apparent. All Sam wants is to be with Frannie, but how long will he be willing to chase after her? Is it possible that the very thing that drew Sam to Frannie in the first place will be the thing that finally drives him away?

RUNNING AWAY WITH FRANNIE, Renee Manfredi's second novel, is an absorbing but at times painful read --- it's pretty clear from early on in the book that this story will not have a happy ending. Effervescent, delightfully drawn Frannie descends to a place no one, not even Sam, can reach, and her journey there is not an easy one. Sam and Frannie's story, though, will encourage re-reading and a reconsidering of the many questions Manfredi raises, most importantly, What are the limits of love? The nuances of this question, which are explored by many of the characters in the novel, make RUNNING AWAY WITH FRANNIE a great choice for book discussion groups.

In addition to rooting for Sam and Frannie, readers will be entertained by the many secondary characters whose eccentricities Manfredi explores in true Southern style. There's O'Malley, the crotchety old man waging a personal vendetta against Picasso; Jimmy, the inept philanderer; and Sam's own mother, who passive-aggressively delivers opinions of her children's friends and lovers via the commemorative Elvis plate on which she serves their dinners ("Love Me Tender" Elvis good, fat Graceland Elvis very bad).

In the end, all these elements combine to make RUNNING AWAY WITH FRANNIE rich, complicated, whimsical and tragic --- exactly like Frannie herself.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

you are fortunate enough to stumble upon a book that you relish. This is one of those. It feels as if the author has put her whole heart and soul into the words that skip across the pages. All done in a beautiful and absorbing way. This is a novel that will live long in your own heart and mind, talking to you long after you've given it a special place of honor in your bookcase. A great read and more.

This is the second time I read 'Runnig Away with Frannie' by Renee Manfredi. Fascinated by her short story collection's character depiction and her first novel's complex narrative structure, I looked forward to Renee's third major piece of writing.

'Running Away with Frannie' invites the reader in the life of a single character, Frannie, whose journey through her psychological self is intriguing and leaves the reader in suspense at the end of each chapter.

Frannie travels her life and her mind in indefinite waves of sea water, caught in be tween storms which eventually take her to the bottom of the oceanlost forever in constant current conflit.