Goodnight, Nebraska

McNeal, Tom. Goodnight, Nebraska. New York: Random House.1998. Print

First Sentences:

When Randall Hunsacker was thirteen, his family moved from Salt Lake City to a canyon in the foothills, into a stilted house perched above the tightest in a series of tight turns in the canyon's sharply descending road, so that from their front porch Randall's family often got a good view of cars pushed to the limits of control.  

The screech of tires, followed by the acrid and -- to Randall's nose -- exhilarating odor of burnt rubber, was an everyday occurrence. Randall himself hoped that one of these cars would spin out and perhaps roll over.

Description:

Tom McNeal has written a compelling book about an outcast teenage boy trying to find himself and a life in Goodnight, Nebraska. While there are many, many "coming of age" books about the trials of teens, Goodnight, Nebraska is one of the best, along with Mark Slouka's Brewster, at capturing the thoughts, fears, and choices of the teenager of the twenty-first century.

Randall Hunsaker, age 17, first sees his father die in a freak automobile accident, loses some of his fingers in another car crash, and later kills his step-father over that man's treatment of Randall's mother, sister, and him. But the judge offers him a second chance: Randall is allowed a fresh start, job, and home if he will relocate in very small town of Goodnight, Nebraska. 

He finds himself living with a elderly widow in a town filled with people for whom he has neither respect nor love. He works in a garage and plays on the high school football team where he finds an outlet as a bruising runner ... until he almost dies on the field.

He does have a relationship with a cheerleader, a "nice" girl who already has a nice boyfriend.

She seems in fact so happy and so nice that no one gave much thought to the probability that she, like nearly everyone else in her age-group, carried within her a small hothouse chamber where ideas she didn't yet know to think of a devious incubated in rich and splendid abundance.

Eventually Randall promises to marry her, much to his surprise. But Goodnight is simply not the place of his dreams and their relationship soon is strained to breaking.

Others in Goodnight are also unhappy. Dixie Bailey "not Goodnight's most widely respected citizen," and Dorothy Lockhardt, the long-standing wife of a farmer and the mother of Randall's wife, are desperate for something, anything out of the ordinary in stifling Goodnight. As Dorothy watches her husband drive off to work:

What happened then to Dorothy was what happened almost every time a car drove away these days, whether it contained a visitor or her husband or even her own daughter -- a feeling like a fist opening into a hand gently unfolded inside her.

Randall's search for love, for belonging, and direction are beautifully portrayed by author McNeal, as he follows Randall from traumatic relationships to unfulfilled activities to questionable choices. Randall is not an easy person to love, but given his upbringing and nature, you pull for him throughout the book to realize there is a world that can embrace him and give him life. You are compelled to continue to read his story that is so honestly and compellingly told, full of small decisions and relationships. 

As Dorothy notes:

What you see out of the corner of your eye is almost always the most important part.

And Randall, seen out of the corner of your eye, is a good person searching for his present and future. When Lewis Lockhardt wants Randall to become a farmer and take over his land, and you pull for this plan to succeed.

Randall's life is told in a powerful style, populated by the people and situations that shape him into what he is or can be, both good and bad. Goodnight Nebraska is a strong, exceptionally written book, full of compassion, loss, frustration, love, and questions. 

There are other kinds [of love], too, more than we'd like to think, that come out of the dark and drag us away and tear parts from our bodies, kinds of love that work in their own dim rooms, and harbor more sad forms of intimacy and degradation and sustenance than those standing outside those room can ever dream of.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Slouka, Mark. Brewster

My favorite book of 2013, the new, better Catcher in the Rye about four teenagers living in the small town of Brewster, New York, in 1968 trying to deal with their world, friends, and trials, but written in an solid, personable style to present dialogue, and situations in a gropingly honest manner. A must read. (Previously reviewed here.)