by Caroline Adderson
Groundwood Books
978-1-55498-132-8
214 pp.
Ages 8-12
2012
Nowhere is a place
like no other. It seems endless, remote
and isolated (even more than the beautiful British Columbia of Middle
of Nowhere). If you have hold of
someone’s hand when in nowhere, it
doesn’t seem so bad. But what if the hand
is absent, and someone else is practically pulling off your hand looking for support?
Do you let nowhere swallow you
or do you look for a new hand? Can you choose poorly or is every option viable?
Curtis Schlanka is only 12 but he seems like a boy who has
already lived through a lot. He was
five-and-a-half years old when his mother took off after her boyfriend, Gerry,
leaving Curtis’ kindergarten teacher to contact Social Services. At the Pennypackers’ foster home, he had to
endure nasty bullying from their nine-year-old son, Brandon, until Curtis’ mother
returned and proved she was a fit mother to her new baby, Artie, and was able
to take Curtis home too. She was working
hard at getting her high-school equivalency while working the night shift at
Pay-N-Save, and doing her best to provide for her two sons.
So when she doesn’t come home, Curtis is pretty sure, ten
out of ten, that she’ll be back. Coincidentally,
the elderly woman in the house next door, Mrs. Burt, injures her hip and
recruits Curtis to run some errands for her.
Mrs. Burt and Curtis soon recognize the mutual benefit of helping
each other. After the police are called
in (since their apartment’s rent didn’t get paid), the boys stay hidden at Mrs.
Burt’s, aiming to evade Social Services. Happily, they avoid the authorities while
helping Mrs. Burt too, who enjoys mothering the boys, especially
five-and-a-half year old Artie, whose screaming and crying fits subside with
her TLC.
With school almost finished, Mrs. Burt suggests going up to
her cabin for a holiday, all the while assuring Curtis that he can keep trying
to contact his mom should she return. So,
in her 1957 Chevy Bel Air, they travel to the remote cabin where the boys are
nourished by the sun, Mrs. Burt’s great cooking and lots of activity, including
swimming, fishing and gardening. While
Artie grows emotionally closer to Mrs. Burt, Curtis begins to suspect that she
has her own agenda, confirmed when summer turns to fall and they do not return
for school.
As manipulative as Mrs. Burt may sound, she is nothing more than
an elderly woman who lives on her own and isn’t very mobile but refuses help or
even advice from her “Big Shot” daughter in Toronto. The boys’ missing mother provides Mrs. Burt
with an opportunity to be valuable and in control again. Mrs. Burt never harms the boys, only cares
for them as she would her own grandchildren, but Curtis realizes that they are
relinquishing control to her, giving up the opportunity to connect with
their mom (which is all they wanted when avoiding Social Services).
The nowhere of the boys’ lives could be the remoteness of
the cabin, as Curtis realizes when there is nowhere to go for help; it could be
the untethered nature of their relationship, which provides them only with
superficial supports of food, shelter and parenting; or it could be a temporal
nowhere, neither at the beginning or middle or end, never knowing how many
sleeps until Mom returns. Ultimately
Curtis realizes that Mrs. Burt is in a nowhere of her own: between a life
filled with working in a lumber camp, caring for her family, and being an independent
woman to one of reliance, immobility, seclusion and death. Caroline
Adderson’s storytelling emotionally engages the reader in Curtis’, Artie’s
and Mrs. Burt’s fears of their nowheres, while offering hope about the nowhere in
which the boys’ mother exists. Curtis’ voice
is distinct, both trusting and hesitant, well-balanced with the tone of the
narrative, as he learns that nowhere is just a product of a flawed perception. Nowhere is always somewhere – the chances are
ten out of ten.
