Wrecker by Summer Wood Giveaway with the TLC Book Tour

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (February 15, 2011)

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.

 

Scraps of Life Book Club:  The first thing that I thought of when I heard the title of this book, Wrecker, was not that it was a name for a child.  I figured it was about something bigger, like a train wreck that changed everyone that was involved.  It turns out that this book was about a child named Wrecker who was a train wreck and he DID change the lives of those involved. 

This little guy was born to a young mother who delivered him in a public park of all places.  At that moment I thought, someone needs to adopt this little boy.  That did happen but not for several years later.  Wrecker lived his first year without a permanent name.  His mother finally named him Wrecker because he wrecked things.

His mother, Lisa, did the best  that she could with what she had.  She loved Wrecker and cared for him but in the end, her lack of parenting skills and resources took over and she got caught up with the wrong crowd that landed her in jail for a 15 year sentence.  This, of course, put Wrecker in the public system.  This little angry, untrained bundle of energy, lived up to his name.  He wrecked things and didn't have a stop button.  

The author, Summer Wood has the background of foster-parenting four young siblings.  She knew the system and that led to the writing of this book.  I loved her descriptive writing style of the characters and events throughout the novel.  She made everything so real.  Sad thing is, we all know kids that get caught in the system and have heard of kids like Wrecker.   Ms. Woods takes this little wrecker and puts him into a family that wasn't a family by conventional standards.  It was this type of family that he needed to get unconditional love and support.

I won't go into details and spoil the book but the boy was compared to the likes of a dog.  He attached himself to those who fed and showed him attention.   This really tore at my heart and I knew at that time that this hippie, unconventional family knew him and would be able to break and train him. 

photo credit: Miriam Berkley

About Summer Wood

Summer Wood is the author of WRECKER,  pub. date from Bloomsbury in February 2011.  Her first novel, Arroyo, was published in 2001 by Chronicle Books.  She lives in Taos, New Mexico, and writes a blog at www.thewhereofit.com.  Connect with Summer on her website, www.summerwoodwrites.com.
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GIVEAWAY

1 copy of Wrecker

USA/Canada

Ends 5/2

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 Thanks to the publisher and TLC Book Tours for providing a copy of the book for my participation in the Blog Tour as well as a giveaway copy to one of my readers.  Click, HERE, to see what others are saying about the book!  I'm the first on the tour.