July 19, 2019
Gr 8 Up-Fifteen-year-old Carter Danforth is already six feet tall, but in no way does he feel like a grown-up. After a tornado destroys the Tulsa home he shares with his mom, leaving her hospitalized, Carter displays a mix of adolescent emotions and decision-making skills as he sets out on his own for California to locate his absent father. Accompanying Carter on his mission is his dad's old guitar that he bought back from a pawn shop where it landed after he left. Over the course of Carter's journey, which includes several detours, he finds himself and his true purpose in life with the help of strangers-some kinder than others. Carter is realistically portrayed as a conflicted protagonist who sometimes contradicts himself in his effort to make sense of his world, particularly the meaning of family. The secondary characters, who could have easily been stereotypical, are instead multidimensional and complicated. Lacko's descriptions of the desert Southwest, where Carter spends most of his journey, and its unique cuisine and culture, add texture to the story. Though Carter's story relies on too many coincidences, plot contrivances, and a conveniently tidy ending, it is a nicely paced and entertaining read. VERDICT A diverting novel that will appeal especially to teen readers interested in music.-Melissa Kazan, Horace Mann School, NY
Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2019
A debut YA road novel tells the story of an Oklahoma teen traveling across the West with his father's guitar. Fifteen-year-old Carter Danforth raids his single mother's savings in order to buy back the left-handed acoustic guitar that his father--a successful musician--pawned on the way out of town six years ago. (" 'Creativity, Victory, Heart, and Discipline.' Those four words had mattered to his father, enough to have them custom-stained into the guitar. The inscription was as valuable to Carter as the guitar itself, proof his father once had some good in him.") But a tornado strikes Tulsa while Carter is in the pawn shop, and after a night hiding in the building's basement, he walks home only to discover that his house has been torn in two by the storm. When he finally locates his mother, she's lying in a hospital bed. She instructs him to buy himself a plane ticket to Reno to stay with his aunt--using the money he's already spent on the guitar, of course--but instead Carter decides to find his father in California. If he can get him to sign the guitar and increase its value, he'll be able to pay back his mother. On the road out west, he runs into all sorts of interesting characters, including a carpenter named Darren Bartles, who teach Carter about life and music--making the instrument that he's lugging around less a memento of his father's departure and more a tool to express the songs inside himself. Lacko's prose is as full of grit and color as a classic country ballad: "The old man on the stage jutted his jaw in Darren's direction. 'We've seen him before, ' he said with a voice made of velvet and gravel. 'He's about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.' " Carter's is a heartwarming tale that mostly avoids sounding sentimental, with stakes that are simultaneously kitchen table and larger-than-life. It reads like the origin story of some mythic troubadour, and one can't help but start to feel romantic about Americana by the time Carter reaches the end of his road. A sweet, twangy tale about a boy finding his future on the way to his past.
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