Book Review: Wrecker by Summer Wood

Title: Wrecker
Author: Summer Wood
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication Date: February 20, 2011
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-1608192809
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Set amid the giant trees of northern California’s magical Lost Coast, Wrecker is the story of a nearly broken boy who unexpectedly finds a family.

After foster-parenting four young siblings a decade ago, Summer Wood tried to imagine a place where kids who are left alone or taken from their families would find the love and the family they deserve. For her, fiction was the tool to realize that world, and Wrecker, the central character in her second novel, is the abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways. It’s June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker’s birth mother, is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she’s in prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he’s shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County, California. When he arrives he’s scared and angry, exploding at the least thing, and quick to flee. Wrecker is the story of this boy and the motley group of isolated eccentrics who come together to raise him and become a family along the way.
For readers taken with the special boy at the center of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Wrecker will be a welcome companion.

My Review:

Wrecker by Summer Wood is a delightfully heartwarming story of 3-year-old Wrecker, yes that is his name, and how he lost his mother, Lisa Fay, when she became imprisoned and Wrecker wound up being raised in a hippie commune in the 1960’s after being placed into foster care. The author challenges the preconceived notion of “family” and brings the reader to realize that elements of family can be assembled from a group that does not even closely resemble the stereotypical family. Wood shows the reader these elements, including love, dedication and adoration through Wrecker’s development throughout his childhood and into early adulthood. Wrecker is realistically written beautiful prose which describes each of the story’s flawed characters, bringing the reader into the lives of these odd, yet decidedly devoted individuals from whom Wrecker learns to live, love, and come into his own. I recommend Wrecker to any reader looking for an uplifting story of a non-traditional family and believe book discussion groups would have plenty to talk about on this one.

Further information about author Summer Wood may be found on her website and her blog.

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I received a copy of Wrecker by Summer Wood from TLC Book Tours to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.