cover image Where the Road Goes

Where the Road Goes

Joanne Greenberg. Henry Holt & Company, $25 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-5163-6

From the beginning of her career, Greenberg (In This Sign) has excelled in creating thoughtful characters who fight to express their independent spirit. Here, sensibilities reflecting what one character terms a ""sixties parody"" rule both strong-minded protagonist Antigone (""Tig"") Warriner and her confused granddaughter, Hope. As a result, this earnest, carefully constructed novel, built from letters and diary entries, provides both a sweeping view of social issues and an involving story of individual aspirations and family dynamics. Tig, at 62, is on a year-long endeavor called The Walk, a pedestrian journey across the country to learn how people feel about environmental changes where they live. Since the 1950s, Tig has been dedicated to causes--Civil Rights in the South, free speech at Berkeley, the Brotherhood Literacy Program. A 10-year marital rift and the sense of abandonment felt by her two daughters, Justice and Solidarity, have not daunted Tig. As she walks from Fresno, Calif., to Woods Hole, Mass., in the company of an ebbing and swelling band of activists of varying agendas and ethics, Tig monitors events back home in Boulder, Colo. Hope, at 18, becomes pregnant by and marries Larry Walks Away, a dangerously troubled boy of Native American origin and ideologies. Tig tries to counsel Hope, but their separation proves more daunting than she imagines. In her diary, Tig reflects, ""Were I at home, I would be less a part of the family's lives. Our distance has brought us closer to one another."" But while she is everyone's postal confidante, she is ultimately unprepared for the final, foreshadowed tragedy. The meaning of tribe--among family, among gays, among idealists--ties this novel neatly together, and as usual Greenberg's writing is strongest when she indicates that sometimes love is helpless against the ironies of miscommunication and fate. (Feb.)