Turn Left At The Cow

Turn Left At The Cow

Juvenile fiction
"As I was falling in [a stand alone freezer unit], something
rolled out of the box into the bottom of the freezer. The last
thought I had before I landed on it was that I had some mutant form of
jet lag or something. Because I could have sworn it looked just like
a head.
A frozen human head."
After I review a significant and hefty work of non fiction I
often find myself craving something shall we say lighter. Needless to
say after covering the very powerful Five Days At Memorial with its
well researched coverage of a disaster and its aftermath I was ready
for something just plain fun. Not surprisingly I grabbed up Lisa
Bullard's Turn Left At The Cow. It was exactly what my mentor, Dr.
Betsy Webb, would have recommended. I thoroughly enjoyed each and
every chapter.
Trav, author of the quote at the top, has run away from home.
He's had to give up his school and friends and the place he's grown up
so he and his mother could move in with her new husband. He doesn't
want a new dad. He'd like to learn about the old father he never
met. He's flown from California to Minnesota, turning up at his
grandmother's house.
There are a lot of surprises in store for Trav. His first day,
in his grandmother's basement, cleaning out an old freezer as part of
his punishment, Iz, the boy next door's cousin, informs him that she's
going to find the loot his bank robber father hid before he
disappeared. He had no idea his dad was a felon. His realtionship to
his notorious sire shapes the way almost the entire town treats him.
Some shun him as a chip off the old block, a bad seed. Others will
stop at nothing to find the still unclaimed booty.
So when people think he's come into the ill-gained loot, even
though he's as much in the dark concerning its whereabouts as anyone
else, he finds himself in serious danger.
Oh, yeah, I left you hanging on purpose. If you want to learn
about the frozen human head...
...you'll just have to read the book. You'll be glad you did.
On a personal note, that old groundhog, Mr. Puxatawny Phil, must be
chuckling in his burrow at his predictive prescience. Just a week
before the calendar start of spring we've just been clobbered by a big
old snowstorm, a return to winter wonderland. Today it's still coming
down. But tomorrow I plan on some late season sledding.
A great big shout out goes out to Dr. Betsy Webb and the other
superintendents who saw the wisdom in declaring an unexpected snow day.
Julia Emily Hathaway


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