So Far Gone

Walter, Jess So Far Gone. New York : HarperCollins 2025. Print.

 

First Sentences:

A prim girl stood still as a fencepost of Rhys Kinnick's front porch. Next to her, a cowlicked boy shifted his weight from snow boot to snow book. Both kids wore backpacks. On the stairs below them, a woman held an umbrella against the pattering rain...."We aren't selling anything," said the boy. He appeared to be about six. "We're your grandchildren."


Description:

Rhys Kinnick chose to become a recluse. One day, simply fed up with his work as a newspaper columnist on environmental issues, the world in general, and his own life in particular, he walked off his job. He left his home and drove to an almost-abandoned deep woods cabin built by his grandfather, unoccupied and rarely visited now. There he lived off the grid for seven years -- no phone, no internet, no television, no outside communication -- peacefully, collecting books to be read for pleasure or research for a possible future book he was writing. He slowly erased himself from everything.

I felt like the world was drifting in one direction and I was going the other way. 

But the appearance of his grandchildren, Asher and Leah, on his porch, and a note from his daughter held by the kids' neighbor who brought them, changed his life. 

Dear Anna. If you're reading this, I had to leave in a hurry. I know this is a lot to ask but can you take the kids to my father, Rhys Kinnick. He is a recluse who cut off contact with our family and now lives in squalor in a cabin north of Spokane....

Rhys' daughter, Bethany, had to flee from her husband Shane who recently had become an extreme religious fanatic and planned to forcibly move their family into The Rampart, an armed religious community of similar ultra far-right souls. He had frequently argued with Bethany that she was an unfit mother for not bowing to his demands and his position as husband and father, finally threatening to take sole custody of their young children and make this move with or without her consent.

Rhys awkwardly takes in the young children. But the next day at Asher's chess tournament, they are confronted by two armed thugs from The Rampart. Acting on the orders of the children's father, the roughnecks beat up Rhys, violently grab the children, and take off with them. 

It is now up to Rhys, along with the help of a retired detective, a Native American neighbor, and his ex-girlfriend to try to locate and take back his grandchildren from the religious fortress. But even if he does find and reclaim his grandchildren, what then?

This may sound like a fairly common, straightforward tale, but in the hands of a skilled author like Jess Walter, all the elements found in a quality book -- great plot, writing, characters, and setting -- play important, unpredictable roles in the unspooling of this tale. Relationships are created, challenged, destroyed, and renewed throughout the book, with characters both rising to the challenges facing them and alternatively failing to reach their own desired goals. 

The story and people grow closer to readers until you simply have to keep reading to peek at what will occur next, find out how a person could possibly escape a situation, or watch from between fingers over your eyes whether impending violence will take place and what the outcome will be.

It's a compelling read full of conflicting emotions, bravery, hiding, and throughout it all, an underlying love for family and friends. Well-written, wonderfully paced, and chock full of interesting people and situations, So Far Gone is a highly worthwhile read for just the pleasure of good writing and all the other elements that make a great read.

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

 Haruf, Kent. Plainsong

Two elderly bachelor farmer brothers take in a pregnant teenage girl, protect her from an abusive boyfriend and help her adjust to a life on an isolated farm in a small town. Wonderfully touching and honest. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

 

Fred

Click here to browse over 480 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

Truevine

Macy, Beth.  Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South. New York: Little, Brown. 2016. Print.

First Sentences:

The story seemed so crazy, many didn't believe it at first, black or white.

But for a century, it was whispered and handed down in the segregated black communities of Roanoke, the regional city hub about thirty miles from Truevine. Worried parents would tell their children to stick together when they left home to see a circus, festival, or fair. 

Description:

With the recently-announced closing of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, it was coincidental that I had just finished Beth Macy's fascinating Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South. And what a story she uncovered about the circus and the people who were part of them.

In 1914, George and Willie Muse, age 6 and 9, were albino black children with ashy white skin and blue eyes. They spent their days working with their sharecropper family picking tobacco on a plantation in Truevine, Virginia. Their skin burned easily and their eyes constantly watered in the bright sunlight, so they were forced to squint and look down throughout the day. Their working hours were nicknamed, "Can see to can't see" - daylight to dark.

But in 1914, under mysterious circumstances, George and Willie were taken from the tobacco fields by a carnival man and transported away. Told that their Momma was dead, they were put on exhibition as part of the freak show where they stood on a platform to let small town locals stare at them. They were billed at Eko and Iko, the Ecuadorian Savages, wearing huge dreadlocks (unusual in that era) and various costumes, not speaking or looking up. When it was accidentally discovered one day that they were natural musicians able to play any tune on any instrument, music was added to their sideshow performance.

Their "agent" (who had taken them from the fields) kept their meager pay for himself, giving them only food and clothes for years. He moved them to different carnivals and finally, after eight years, they became part of the biggest show on earth, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Their mother, Harriett Muse, after realizing her boys were gone, spent years waiting for the carnival to return to her town and for her to reclaim her children. If that happened, she also planned to extract her revenge on the carnival for taking her boys and not returning them. And that day did finally come.

Author Macy did extensive research on George and Willie Muse, as well as any relatives and townspeople in Truevine who might have known them. It took her years to get Nancy Saunders, to open up to tell her story. Nancy was Willie and George's great niece and primary caregiver for Willie, who was still living when Muse started her research. Macy was never able to interview Willie (prevented by Nancy), but many people did share their stories. Macy also interviewed circus memorabilia collectors and "freak authorities" who knew of the Muses through articles, posters, and a few photos shared in this book.

It's a gripping book as Macy painstakingly paints the world of circuses, the life of performers like George and Willie, and the hardscrabble existence of people living in small towns and working on plantations during that era. 

And hanging over the entire book is the uncomfortable situation where the illiterate Willie and George were forcibly separated from their families and their slave-like existence of picking tobacco in desperate poverty with little prospect for change, but with their loving mother. 

While they probably enjoyed the luxuries of traveling the world with food, clothing, shelter with a new family of similar people, highly respected albeit exhibited as freaks, they were lied to about their mother who never stopped looking for them. And once reunited with her, they were able to arrange to continue their carnival life, but with the approval of their mother and financial compensation for their families, a much more positive conclusion for all.

Thoroughly informative, fascinating, and often disturbing to revisit that world of carnivals, circuses, and performers in the early twentieth century through the story of Willie and George, two albino black children/men. 

Happy reading. 

Fred

(See more recommended books)
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Dean, Jensen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love & Tragedy at the Circus. 

Life and era of Leitzel, the internationally famous trapeze artist of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus at the same time the Muse brothers were sideshow act with the same circus. Brilliantly written about the true life of a girl with a talent that brought her to the pinnacle of fame and fortune throughout the world. (previously reviewed here)