Monday, February 22, 2016

True Stories at the Smoky View


True Stories at the Smoky View by Jill McCroskey Coupe

       Vraiment  Lynde (Vrai for short) travels to Knoxville, Tennessee to attend the funeral of her friend Skip.  She kind of has to be there.  She has his ashes among his other possessions, including his dog.  She hoped the trip would be short.  She would attend the funeral, deliver his ashes, belongings and dog to his mother and then leave for home.   
      What she wasn’t expecting was finding a shoeless ten year old boy abandoned in the funeral home parking lot.  Jonathan is the son of her childhood best friend and she can’t just leave him there.  Even if he wasn’t the son of her best friend she couldn’t just leave him there!  She decides, along with Jonathan, that he will come with her.  His parents had been murdered and he was now living with his uncle and not so cuddly aunt.
        The other thing she wasn’t expecting was a snowstorm that cripples the East.  While she and Jonathan hole up in a roadside motel, The Smoky View, they begin to read some of Skip’s stories from his computer.  Jonathan is convinced that Skip and a co-worker’s deaths were not accidental.  As they start to make sense of Skip’s stories and make connections they become close, bonding in ways that can only mean a future for them both.
       What I liked about this story was the findings in what seemed like nothings.  Vrai and Jonathan put together Skip’s story from what looked like impossible to find nothings.  Good job!
The author worked on this story for 20 years and she deserves to have her story read.

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