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Carol
S. Carter,
Photographer
The
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A New Young Adult Novel by One of
the Masters of the Genre
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Selected to TOP SHELF FICTION
FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL READERS
from Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)
“Sometimes
I think I’ve been waiting for that crash my whole life,” Andy muses
when his drunken father nearly crushes him with the family car. The
moment sums up 15-year-old Andy’s life with his dysfunctional family.
When his father is involved in another accident, he pressures fledgling
driver Andy to take responsibility, heightening his son’s mental
anguish. Having heard of the Aboriginal practice of a walkabout, Andy
chooses to pit himself against the Wisconsin wilderness, calling his
journey a walkaway—a walkabout with purpose. Methodically, Carter
reveals that Andy became catatonic after an earlier episode with his
father and how, alone and unmedicated, his behavior becomes every bit
as aberrant as his father’s binges, in a realistic depiction of the
complicated co-dependent relationship between alcoholic father and
child.... The interactions between Andy and his addicted father are
achingly authentic, providing a painful yet hopeful glimpse into the
volatile life of an addict and his son. (Fiction. 12 & up) --Kirkus
Review
From the book jacket:
Andy is fed
up with his dysfunctional family’s impossible problems: his father’s
alcoholism, his mother’s avoidance tactics, his older brother’s
condescension. He’s walking away from it all--physically, into the
wilderness of the Wisconsin woods, mentally, into the dark reaches of
his own mind. Andy confronts the challenges of survival in the rugged
terrain, battles illness and the elements, and successfully eludes his
pursuers; but he cannot flee from his own emotional demons.
This gripping portrait of a troubled young man’s desperate
attempt to escape from his problems is a harrowing survival adventure
filled with drama and suspense, and laced with dark humor....
Alden Carter, who spent much of his childhood in
northern Wisconsin, where Walkaway is set, wrote the novel “to carry
out in fiction a fantasy I had as a teenager. Like most young people
from troubled families, I dreamed of escaping to live on my own in some
ideal place. In my case, I fantasized about living in the wilderness. I
knew it wasn’t a very practical idea, but it helped me get to sleep on
many nights. Eventually, life provided better answers to the problems I
longed to escape. Still, I wonder sometimes how it might have been had
I--to use Andy’s term--gone on a ‘walkaway.’”
***
From noted reviewer Cooper
Renner.
Where Gary Paulsen might have made this a novel of a
successful survival in such a life, Carter delves into a far more
likely scenario: a young man's immaturity and inability to make
life-changing decisions. Andy is a likable, but deeply flawed,
character whom young readers are likely first to identify with and then
to be fearful for, as Carter brings Andy's problems to the fore. Andy's
narration is frank, gruff and sometimes crude, in the way of
15-year-old boys, and this novel is not for readers who want easy
resolutions and rainbows at the end of every cloud, but for those
unafraid to deal with serious issues. A serious and mature work.
(Four stars on Amazon.)
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From
Holiday House
www.holidayhouse.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-8234-2106-0
ISBN-10: 0-8234-2106-6
$16.95
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