The Way Home
by George Pelecanos
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Book Summary Information
Author: George PelecanosEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-12
ISBN: 0316156493
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of The Way Home
Book Review: THE WAY HOME is a Perfect Novel for Father's Day
Summary: 4 Stars
George Pelecanos is considered by many to be the premier writer of modern American crime fiction. Throughout his career, he has been compared to successful contemporaries such as Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly --- both of whom have gone on to huge bestselling status. Meanwhile, Pelecanos has stayed fairly under the radar --- but those in the know who have followed him through his engaging novels have been treated to some of the grittiest and hardest hitting fiction being written today.
With THE WAY HOME, Pelecanos continues his trend of moving away from heavy crime dramas and focusing more intimately on interpersonal relationships between families as well as the social impact that a neighborhood and local friends can play on an individual's development and creation of their moral judgment. Pelecanos is a master of centering his work on moral dilemmas, where the choices that are made by his characters defines the path their lives will ultimately take.
THE WAY HOME begins in Washington, D.C. in 1999, and the focal point is the Flynn family. Thomas Flynn and his wife Amanda are Irish-Americans who have made their way into upper middle class life and raised their only child, Chris, in a fairly safe environment. As Chris hits his teens, he begins to sway from the straight and narrow, loses interest in academics and sports, and gets mixed up with the wrong crowd. A few minor incidents lead to a major arrest for assault and reckless endangerment that finds him remanded to a juvenile detention facility called Pine Ridge.
Chris is part of Unit 5 at Pine Ridge, a predominately non-white population of reckless youths where danger lurks at every turn. He is nicknamed "white boy" and befriends a few fellow Unit 5 residents while trying to keep his nose clean. Meanwhile, his father, Thomas, is on the outside running his own carpet business, Flynn's Floors, and feels the heavy burden of guilt over Chris's failures. Inside Pine Ridge, Chris exists inside a world of violence, retaliation and protection of your own --- a code of conduct that involves him and his friends in a fatal brawl on Pine Ridge's basketball court.
The novel jumps 10 years to current day. Chris and a few of his former Pine Ridge comrades have found work with the family business and are desperately trying to lead normal lives. However, it would not be a Pelecanos novel without the existence of temptation. Chris and his co-worker Ben find that in the form of a bag containing $50,000 hidden under the floorboards of a house they are helping to remodel. They resist the temptation --- but Ben gets drunk one night and shares this find with another former Pine Ridge friend, Lawrence Newhouse. Lawrence takes the cash for himself, not realizing that a pair of particularly nasty ex-convicts have just been released from long prison terms and have returned to the neighborhood in search of the money they had stashed away years earlier.
The last part of THE WAY HOME deals with the spree of violence that the two ex-cons --- Sonny Wade and Wayne Minors --- inflict upon those they suspect of possibly being responsible for the disappearance of their $50,000. Ben is an unfortunate casualty in this spree, and Chris discovers that he had revealed to Lawrence the location of the money. Chris is now at a crossroads: involve his father and local law enforcement, or stick to the code with which he was instilled at Pine Ridge and assist Lawrence in confronting the two violent criminals.
THE WAY HOME does end with a bang --- but not nearly as violent an outcome as some of Pelecanos's earlier works. It seems that he has developed into much more than a crime novelist as his recent works have moved more towards interpersonal relationships and the impact of socio-economic factors upon lower- to middle-class residents of modern D.C. THE WAY HOME is a perfect novel for the upcoming Father's Day observance, as the relationship between Thomas and Chris Flynn is a complicated yet strong father-son bond expertly explored by a writer at the top of his game.
--- Reviewed by Ray Palen
Summary of The Way Home
Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a steady job in his father's company, he's seriously dating a woman he respects, and, aside from the distrust that lingers in his father's eyes, his mistakes are firmly in the past.One day on the job, Chris and his partner come across a temptation almost too big to resist. Chris does the right thing, but old habits and instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability with sudden treachery and violence. With his father and his most trusted friends, he takes one last chance to blast past the demons trying to pull him back.
Like Richard Price or William Kennedy, Pelecanos pushes his characters to the extremes, their redemption that much sweeter because it is so hard fought. Pelecanos has long been celebrated for his unerring ability to portray the conflicts men feel as they search and struggle for power and love in a world that is often harsh and unforgiving but can ultimately be filled with beauty.
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