Driven: The White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back
Melissa Stephenson. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $23 (256p) ISBN 978-1-328-76829-2
Rather than render her road story with the usual perils and pleasures of travel, Stephenson builds her memoir around the automobiles that transported her through a life of wanderlust. The book opens with Stephenson embarking on a road trip in 2000 in her brother Matthew’s 1970s Ford truck after he committed suicide days earlier. From there she recalls her blue-collar childhood in the 1970s Midwest and her life as a single mother living in Montana; the different makes and models of her automobiles provide a solid touchstone for recounting time, place, and the economic and emotional circumstances of her life. Stephenson combs her memories of the various autos: the VW Squarebacks (“Volkswagens, like tattoos, build character”), a 1984 Saab (“The two years I owned her I... [was] so busy exercising my freedom that Matthew and I rarely saw each other”), and a 1988 Honda Civic (“In one short decade, we’d bootstrapped our way over the poverty line and into a facsimile of a middle-class lifestyle”). Stephenson insightfully maps her family history with tales of strife and love; her beloved brother’s mental illness and suicide; her marriage, motherhood, and divorce; and finally finding her voice as a writer. Stephenson’s memoir offers a rewarding twist on an American story, and is filled with love, grief, grit, and healing. (June)
Details
Reviewed on: 04/09/2018
Genre: Nonfiction
Compact Disc - 978-1-5385-3942-2
Compact Disc - 978-1-5385-3943-9
MP3 CD - 978-1-5385-3944-6
Open Ebook - 218 pages - 978-1-328-76830-8
Paperback - 272 pages - 978-1-328-58881-4