(1) Wrecker: a Novel

Title: Wrecker: A Novel by Summer Wood
Publisher: Bloomsbury
287 pages
Genre: Fiction

Synopsis: It's June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker's birth mother, is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she's in prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he's shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County, California. When he arrives he's scared and angry, exploding at the least thing, and quick to flee. Wrecker is the story of this boy and the motley group of isolated eccentrics who come together to raise him and become a family along the way.

Review: Families are complicated and at a time when the US is debating about who should be able to adopt, who should be able to marry etc. this is the perfect time to read this book. Wrecker is about love. Love of a little boy who needs a family and the people who fall in line to help him.  Sometimes it truly takes a village to raise a child and the Wrecker is one of those children.

His mother in jail, his aunt disabled and his uncle unable to care for a wild 3 year old boy and his aunt, his uncle turns to his eccentric neighbors for help.  The three women and one man who live there all take to Wrecker immediately.  They all have secrets and feel a kinship with Wrecker.  They raise him as their own proving that love is what builds a family.  When Wreckers biological mother gets out of prison you hold your breathe waiting for what will happen next and I'm not going to spoil that for you.  You have to experience it for yourself.  A beautifully told story about family.  Great way to start off a new year.

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