Book #2 Post #2

Road Out of Winter #2

This book is interesting to say the least. It begins in Appalachian Ohio with the main character Wylodine. She is stuck in an ongoing winter that began roughly two years ago and has been living alone for half that time after her mother and her mother's boyfriend, Lobo, left for California. When Wylodine and her mother moved in with Lobo a number of years before the story takes place, they joined his operation of illegally growing and selling weed at his farm on the outskirts of the town. As a result of this, Wylodine is constantly berated by people in the community with questions, comments, and requests about her family business which she dreads more than anything else. Another interesting part about the story's background is Wylodine's best friend, Lisbeth, who is part of a cult-like organization referred to as "The Church." One day The Church decides to just get up and leave town completely heading south and taking half the population in town with them. This not only leaves the town in shambles but also robs Wylodine of her last real friend and leaves her with practically nothing left but a run down farm and no plants. 

After finding him injured in the woods when gathering firewood, Wylodine befriends a stranger, named Grayson that remembered her from their time in high school together. She ends up taking him to the doctor who simply gives Grayson an ankle boot despite him really needing more care and leaves them with the ominous warning that this is best so he "doesn't get left behind." Soon after this, Wylodine receives a letter from her mother who she hasn't heard from since she left with Lobo a year earlier. The letter tells Wylodine to come out to California with them so she instantly begins her preparations to do so. As she's getting ready to leave, the town and seemingly society in general start to fall apart pretty rapidly. There are lines for everything in town, all the stores are sold out of products, and even the gas station has run out of gas. This chaos sets the stage for the encounters, some of which are quite peculiar, that Wylodine and the companions she takes with her have on their journey.

I believe this is where the book's theme of finding a family can really be seen. Wylodine constantly refers to her life before winter came with her mother and Lobo throughout the story, but the perception of these memories shifts at some point in the plot. As the novel goes on, it is obvious that Wylodine learned alot about life from being involved with a sketchy business and inherently sketchy people while at home, yet the flashbacks she has never seem to be genuine memories with the people she supposedly loves, her family. This can be seen by the way she reacts when townspeople early in the book even just mention the word "family" to her making her instantly become defensive saying Lobo isn't her real father. While this may seem minimal, it shows that Wylodine herself recognizes early on that she does not have the family she necessarily wants to. Once meeting her new friends though, Wylodine is introduced to a new type of family. A family in which everyone truly cares for and trusts each other. This is hard for Wylodine to accept at first as she always been taught never to trust anyone but she slowly gets more used to the idea untils she fully accepts it and finally says the words "my family" out loud at the very end of book. 

Overall, I think the plot started out well and kind of trailed off in the middle, but the overarching themes were clearly present. The weird details, occurrences, and people throughout novel honestly kept me intrigued despite the randomness of some it. I found that the theme of "belonging" was interestingly approached and well addressed because it was not initially in my head as I began the book. I originally assumed the story would be a tale of perseverance, which it somewhat was, but there was a much deeper side to book that I was not expecting to encounter. It was not my favorite book in the end, but it was a fun read nonetheless.