If You Want Me to Stay: A Novel

This time, the orders take a dreadful turn. Carter, hot and sweaty and sick of hiding out in the truck, leaves and heads back into the house, gaily calling out "He ain't even in here." His father grabs him around the neck, lops off his hair with a huge pair of scissors and cuts off his ear lobe in the bargain. Joel Junior and Tank see this and take off in the truck. A 14-year-old boy with no license and a little kid in tow, headed for who knows where. Some months before, his mother had gone off and no word had been heard from her. Then, his older sister left and she also disappeared. Joel Junior was the sane person in charge: loving, hating, frightened, brave, responsible, and wishing someone else would take over.

What follows is a stream-of-consciousness riff, a picaresque journey shot through with the soul music their Daddy taught them to love. Joel Junior sometimes cannot get the music out of his head; at other times he depends on the music to see him through the hard parts. He decides that he will search for their mother, who will surely take them in. His first stop is at his sister's, whom he has found through a friend. She tells him where to find their mother, and that the trip will be fruitless. He leaves Tank with her and, in a fugue state, hitchhikes his way to another town. He encounters a good-natured trucker, a kindly Mexican man, a "Streetclothes" policeman, a junkie alcoholic--and he believes that they are all leading him to his mother.

The inexorable ending of this story will break your heart, but it will also make you laugh, sometimes ruefully. The music in Joel Junior's head is telling him about love and, with no teachers other than soul singers, he is trying to make it up as he goes along. Read this short novel in one sitting; it'll knock you out. --Valerie Ryan