Customer Reviews

The Travels of Annie T. Hastings

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The Travels of Annie T. Hastings is literary fiction at it's best. The story is of Annie T. Hastings, a woman in her 70's desperate to find the past she left behind some 40 years ago. The story is based on the travels of the author's mother and the journals she left behind upon her death.

Annie decides she is going to mend her broken family by going to visit them before going to visit the daughter she was forced to give up for adoption. She wants to give her daughter a stable family to come home to. She packs up her car, her dog, her gun, and a little bit of cash a takes off to visit her nieces. Annie knows she is going to need more money after a short stay in her first stop. Her nieces have antiques that Annie can sell. When she arrives, she is not welcome the way one would welcome a relative that you haven't seen in years. Reading this part of the book made my blood boil and I wished I could reach through the pages and smack the nieces around a little bit for Annie.

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Reviewed by Teresa Aguilar, wife of Gregory Aguilar

I absolutely adored this book. I laughed and I cried with the many sides of Annie that were portrayed. That is one woman that I would have enjoyed getting to know. There were so many aspects to Annie's personality that reminded me of people in my own life who have since passed on. And Wooly was a dog with a lot of human-like characteristics that was the perfect companion for this very intense woman.
Annie T. Hastings would be considered a strong woman no matter what time period she lived in. This book was a remarkable tale of her trek to find a daughter that she gave up at birth. You will find yourself sympathizing with her as she runs into obstruction after obstruction trying to get there. But no matter what is thrown her way she perseveres. Annie travels with her dolls and her doll casts to visit family members trying to make a connection with them. Wanting to make dolls with her family, she wants to present a united front of a strong family to her daughter when she finally meets her.
The people that Annie met on her travels were described so well that I could almost see them, especially Sister Rose. Sister Rose may have been strict and hard on some of the women who came to her and the other sisters for help but in the end you realize she was only that way because she cared so deeply for all those under her care. She only wanted the best for them.
I felt great compassion for Annie as she dealt with various members of her family. Her nieces trying to keep Annie from retrieving her furniture, making excuses. And even though they treated her badly she triumphed and was able to recovery her property. You are left with the feeling of wanting to crawl into the book and help Annie with her problems with her family.
When Annie finally finds her daughter you can feel her vulnerability as she tries to figure out the best way to meet her. Basically stalking her daughter she ends up nearly severing the relationship before it starts. Throughout the book Annie is a strong woman yet she shares her failings in life as well.
If I take this book at face value as the journals of a woman's journey through the latter part of life it is absolutely amazing. But if it is just a story by Michael Hastings then he has an eerie understanding of a woman's mind. Either way I enjoyed the book and would certainly recommend it to my friends.

I read the book and reccomended it to my teenage daughter. She loved it too.
I found it interesting, as the author builds suspension throughout the book, backed by solid humor and charged with lots of emotional experiences. Humor, pain, expectations, excentrism, love and hope, are all interwined to the end, and one can't help but embrace and support the heroine's journey in finding the long lost daughter.
It is a very moving story that exposes the happiness and joyous things that one enjoys in the life journey, but at the same time, the sad and sometimes ugly reality of what life can be,-that, faced with heroism and humor.
Laughing and crying at times, the book kept me put, and of course, i finished it in one sitting.
Great book!

Crazy lady or prophet? Her "game-approach" to life events and characters is consistent through a chain of challenging scenarios that feel like hints of a broader design custom wrapped for our dear Annie as she traverses the bread basket in a geriatric Datsun with her trusty canine, Wooly, to reunite with her birth daughter who she gave up some thirty years earlier for adoption. The catalyst of truth's discovery, which is dual-edged through her mythical "journey and destination" story, or "stations of the cross," unfolds in a carefully built moment that justifies it's own suspense. As a senior woman, occupying a life-stage that is commonly used for healing old wounds, she recognizes her necessity to reconcile with past demons beyond the demons she is readily aware of, through this elaborate process of reuniting with her daughter. The reader senses this growing climax as the pages become heavier on the left side of the spine and Annie inches closer to confronting her own shadow.

This fresh read reflects the literary sensibility of a true master even though it is her only known work to date. Since it was published posthumously, we could only hope for some miracle to bring us more of her buried treasures in the future. Every paragraph contains at least one original metaphor craftily woven into scenes loaded with universal insight and decorated with intimate physical detail. The reader finds himself or herself instantly bonded with our heroine--who we must admire, but with a condition of generosity toward her impaired ability to relate to her environment. She brings us into her "other-world" through intrapersonal dialogue inside her journals expressing a desire to be respected for her intelligence. Either through her own narcissism or the underestimation of others, she is somewhat debilitated by the way she is treated by the world.

All apparatus of literature is contained herein. This book receives 5 Zero-Gravity Pens out of a possible 5. It almost gets a pressurized-ink cartridge subtracted for the author's slightly masked suggestion that reconcilement on some level, must precede self-discovery or spiritual growth, a belief she asserts passively and inductively. However, she gets to keep the fifth, pressurized-ink cartridge by virtue of the fact that some of the most worthy paragraphs would be barren if it were not for her beautiful, inductively-hatched perceptions. This is a wonderful book!

Ryan Wenzel--Space Pen Journals

Based somewhat on author Patrick Egan's mother's personal story, "The Travels Of Annie T. Hastings"is that story of 70-year old Annie Hastings who embarks upon a quest to locate her long-lost daughter. The girl was torn from Annie's arms as a newborn infant which Annie was forced to relinquish for adoption. What Annie now seeks is finding her daughter and obtaining understanding, forgiveness, love, and coming the healing of a heart-wound that has been with her for more than half a century. Armed with a gun and a typewriter, as well as being companioned by her dog, Annie encounters memorable characters, undergoes unexpected adventures, and best of all, engages the reader's rapt attention from first page to last making "The Travels Of Annie T. Hastings" an entertaining and highly recommended read which is at times as thoughtful as it is memorable.