Anyone who enjoys a good story about a boy and his dog will most definitely want to read Kenneth M. Caddow's Gather.
The boy, Ian, is the kind of kid you tend to see in rural Maine. He's the kid who doesn't score well on the standardized tests too many people consider the gold standard of education. But when it comes to hunting and understanding the forest, fixing whatever needs mending, and finding a way to earn money to keep his family from going under he could out do his teachers. The dog is Gather, a loving, loyal critter who shows up and sticks around.
Ian's family is just barely getting by. His grandfather is dead. His grandmother has moved South. His father has abandoned him and his mother who, due to an injury incurred on an unregulated job site, has a problem with drugs. She does her best to stay clean, but Ian knows to look for needle tracks. He gets that she has a sickness, not a vice.
"There's sicknesses, like a cold, you can get better from, even if you don't want to. And there's sicknesses you can't get better from unless you decide to, again and again, every day."
But no matter how precarious their life gets Ian doesn't have the option of getting help from official sources, knowing that they'd break the family up and put him in foster care rather than actually helping them. So he handles emergencies large and small...
...until their is one that's too formidable and he takes off for the deep woods rather than losing his canine companion.
Kids who love or wish they could have an animal companion will be hooked on Gather from page one.
On a purrrsonal note, my college librarian father was ashamed of his contractor brother who didn't go further than high school. But I admired Uncle Ken with his sense of ethics and responsibility and married a man just like him. If Ian was real and all grown up he'd be good friends with Eugene. I can see him down at camp sitting around a fire with Eugene and Richard Brown making plans for hunting season.
A great big shout out goes out to the real life Ians of this world.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
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