Synopses & Reviews
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 - a young innocent from a family farm down south - is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single mother in a city she could barely manage to navigate as just one. Three years later, she's alone again. Kids aren't allowed in prison. And Wrecker, scared silent, furious, and hell-bent on breaking every last thing that crosses his path, is shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County. Wrecker is the story of this nearly-broken boy whose presence turns a motley group of isolated eccentrics into a real family. Real enough to make mistakes. Real enough to stick together in spite of everything ready to tear them apart. There's no guidebook to mothering for Melody, who thought the best thing in life was eighty acres of old growth along the Mattole River and nobody telling her what to do - until this boy came along. For Melody, for Len, for Willow and Ruth, for Meg and Johnnie Appleseed, life will never again be the same once Wrecker signs on. And for Lisa Fay, there's one thought keeping her alive through fifteen years of hard time. One day? She'll find her son and bring him home. Set amid the giant trees of Northern California's magical Lost Coast, Wrecker is a rich and rollicking novel for anyone who has ever raised a son, or loved someone else's.
Review
"A love song to well-intentioned, wholly dedicated, and deeply flawed motherhood ... Summer Wood creates more than just a great story, deftly, elegantly, and intricately told. She broadens both our notion of family, and our appreciation for whatever we call our own. Wrecker is a big-hearted, big-loving compassionate book."
Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness
Review
"Summer Wood's remarkable novel carves its way, sentence by gorgeous sentence, into the great complexity of love and family and community. Wood movingly evokes the insatiable hunger for home -- for mother -- that lost children often feel, and the courage and strength they must conjure as they forge new identities. Her dialogue is so natural and full we feel as though we are illicitly eavesdropping ... A stunning and impossibly generous, big-hearted novel." Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map
Synopsis
After foster-parenting four young siblings a decade ago, Summer Wood tried to imagine a place where kids who are left alone or taken from their families would find the love and the family they deserve. For her, fiction was the tool to realize that world, and Wrecker, the central character in her second novel, is the abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways.
Synopsis
After foster-parenting four young siblings a decade ago, Summer Wood tried to imagine a place where kids who are left alone or taken from their families would find the love and the family they deserve. For her, fiction was the tool to realize that world, and Wrecker, the central character in her second novel, is the abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways. 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.For readers taken with the special boy at the center of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Wrecker will be a welcome companion.
About the Author
Summer Wood is the author of Arroyo. In 2007 she was awarded the Literary Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation for her work on Wrecker. She teaches writing for the University of New Mexico's Taos Summer Writer's Conference and in 2009 directed the first annual NEA/Taos Big Read. She is currently the director of the Young Writers' Mentorship Program and has lived in Taos for the past 20 years.