Driving with Dead People........

For those of you whom are scratching their heads over this title, let me assure you it's a book title, not my latest hobby. "Driving With Dead People" is a book written by Monica Holloway, a woman about 10 years younger than me who grew up in the same towns I did. Names of people, major roads, and places have been thinly disguised, but remain quite recognizable to those familiar with the locale.

In all seriousness, I have to confess I read part of the book at our local Borders, but didn't buy it. Not that it's not good, but because I'm going to have to wrap my head around the idea of buying and finishing it. Not because the book doesn't have a happy ending, because it does, just not the kind of ending you necessarily think of as being happy. Yet if any book that drags into the hot blazing sun that which thrives best in the dark can have a happy ending, this one does. To put it bluntly, this is a book about dirty little family secrets in a small Mid-Western town known for being mean.........where a high school basketball coach once received death threats because he couldn't make a winning team out of farm boys with a lot of heart, but little natural talent. And its about putting the title of child rapist and the words depraved indifference on the faces of people I might well have sat beside in church thirty years ago. And it's about adding yet another name to "the list". It's about a demonic sickness/evil I do not understand and thank God I didn't have to endure. It's about healing that some eventually find, but illudes others. I know I'll buy and read it eventually. I'll probably pass it along to my sister too. But not yet.