Dreaming Southern

Boredom and bickering neatly synopsize the typical family car trip. Why revisit such misery in a novel, where weary family discords and the clichéd search for a hidden America all too often harry us along the desperate miles and pages? But meet the Wootens--Lila Mae and her four children--on their trek from Kentucky to California, Route 66 unfurling irresistibly before them during the late days of the Eisenhower era. In Linda Bruckheimer's debut novel, Dreaming Southern, not only is the Wootens' journey full of the requisite kicks, but we elude the nostalgic sentimentality and pat drama that stall most road-trip tales.

When Lila's bill-dodging husband phones from California and importunes her to join him posthaste, she packs her bags and announces, "If that man thinks we're gonna drive all the way across country and not see us some beautiful scenery, then he's got another thing coming!" Thus begins weeks of wandering, dictated solely by the inclinations of Lila's restless and generous heart. Incessantly optimistic and instantly drawn to every lost soul along the road, she is intent on making the drive as memorable as possible for her children. Lila's determination grates on the kids, however, teenaged Becky Jean in particular, who struggles to make sense of her mother's exasperating mix of affection and impulsiveness.

Less engaging is the book's lengthy final section, where we find Lila 30-plus years later, widowed in Los Angeles, her children alternately distant and doting. And if some of the novel's scenes seem paced more for the screen than the page, throughout we are carried along by the author's gentle evocation of tangled family love, her dead-on eye for the details of pop life, and her conjuration of distant skies and highway wanderers. --Ben Guterson