Run by Ann Patchett
Excellent book, set in nearby Boston, and aside from one instance of Mount Auburn Street being called Mount Auburn Drive, it’s accurate in descriptions of places, names and neighborhoods. The heart of story takes place over just a 24-hour span, though there are years of history in the making of that day. It is set around the story of two broken families, one rich, and one poor, and how their lives suddenly intersect.
The first of the families, the wealthier one, consists of a father, a Boston politician, and a good Irish Catholic man. His wife, Bernadette, was from one of those large, sprawling Irish-Catholic families for which Boston is known, and the story begins with her tale of the statue of the Virgin Mary that she was given by her mother, which has been passed, mother to daughter, for generations. She and Bernard has always planned on a big family, but after their first boy, Sullivan, she was not able to carry another baby full term. Determined, they started the process of adoption, and ended up, eventually with not one baby, but his 18-month-old brother as well. That they were African-American did not matter to the Doyles, and Tip and Teddy were instantly loved. Sadly, Bernadette was only able to enjoy her family for four years, before getting diagnosed with and succumbing to cancer. The story takes place 20 years later, when the “little boys” are grown, and college students at Harvard and Northeastern, respectively.
The second family is even smaller, just a devoted, some would say overprotective single mother, Tennessee and her daughter, Kenya. They are also black, and live in just down the street from the Doyles, but across the line into Roxbury, in one of “the Projects.” Kenya, who is eleven, cares only about running, and learning well in school to please her mother. The families lives intersect when Teddy, whose forte in life is memorizing political speeches but who has little direction in life, and Tip, the “serious” one who wants to be an ichthyologist, accompany their father, and Kenya goes with her mother, to a Jesse Jackson speech being given at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
The night turns into a snowy one – as anyone who has lived here knows can happen, especially in January in Boston, and as everyone leaves the lecture, the accident happens, and the two families meet and lives are intertwined in tragic, joyful and unexpected ways.
An excellent book, and a quick, absorbing read, I heartily recommend it. Unless it happens to be January, and you’re enduring your first New England winter … And if you happen to enjoy running, politics, or biology – especially of the fishie sort, you’ll likely enjoy it even more.