Kirkus Review

Linda Camisko Reismann, instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Bayonne, N.J., is suddenly a widow at 26: after only six weeks of marriage, middle-aged husband Wright is dead of a coronary. And so Linda must start all over again. . . in California, maybe. But what to do about Wright's 13-year-old daughter Robin, a sullen pot-smoker who calls Linda ""asshole""? The answer is a cross-country auto trek (Linda's only just learned to drive, Robin mostly sulks in the backseat), with plans to drop Robin off with Wright's Iowa farming family--who'll surely welcome Robin despite a long-ago failing-out with Wright. But Robin has her own plan: to track down her mother (who ran off with a lover eight years ago) and revenge her father. And indeed, when Iowa turns out to be a grim joke--the farm's been sold, Robin's grandpa is in a coma--the obvious next stop is Robin's mother in Arizona (Linda's had the address all along). So it's back on the road again, after Linda, who's unhappily pregnant, secretly stops in at a protest-besieged abortion clinic (she wonders ""if she might die of one simply because no one would be waiting for her not to""). The trip is uneasy--drab motels, itchy tempers, a marathon mutual silent-treatment, scary hitchhikers (who trigger an epic giggling session), a bit of soul-baring (Linda saw her cruel father accidentally electrocuted); there's an idyllic interlude when nice hitchhiker Wolfie, an ex-draft-dodger and soon Linda's lover, invites them along to a wedding in New Mexico; Linda and Robin finally get close in an evening of pot and dancing. And then, predictably, the big reunion with Robin's mom doesn't take (though, happily, Robin doesn't quite go through with her murder-by-fork plan). So what next? Linda and Robin together, of course--""you can become a family by the grace of accident and will""--plus Linda's baby, which she now wants and which wasn't aborted after all (thanks to the chaos of that anti-abortion protest) . . . . True, this is a very sentimental scenario, much closer to Wolitzer's books for young adults than to either Ending or In the Flesh--with too much coincidence, too much YA-style emotional explanation, and a central character who's never quite believably grounded. But isolated moments of feeling do register impressively, and Wolitzer's smooth, shrewd narrative injects enough downbeat irony and humor to avoid treacle. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.