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Runners is the second book in the Oakley series, a family saga based on author Phil Oakley’s family history. Characters within the pages parallel the names of the author’s real family members, and the narrative is based on the stories they told over the years. Books one and two span the Civil War, the Prohibition era, and World War II.
I
knew I was jumping in on the second installment in the series, so I read the synopsis and
some reviews of Little Hatchet, book one, before getting started. It helped. From
that, I gathered that Walter, a primary character from book one, grows up, and
he and wife Ada (the author’s actual grandparents) and their seven children are the focus of Runners.
I
recommend reading this series in order, and here’s why. Even coming in with
some information from the prior story, I still struggled a bit because I didn’t truly have the big picture, know the details of what
each character brought to the story, or understand the relationships. Though Walter and Ada have seven children, Runners really focuses on
two of the sons, secondarily, two of the daughters, and many references to a deceased son. I was left wondering about the rarely mentioned other two daughters. Add to this the quantity of peripheral characters (including several characters
with the same name), it is a lot to manage. A family tree or even a short
bring-to-date placed at the beginning of the book would have been immensely
helpful in keeping all the characters straight, and I think that would help all
readers, not just those who missed book one.
Despite
my confusion, Runners kept me deeply immersed in this family’s stories. Case
in point: at one point, I had given myself an hour to read, and when I looked
up, two hours had passed! And I decided to read another hour…hour-ish. Rich
descriptions and factoids (Thirty-five cents for a meal?! Monthly rent for $22.75?!)
will place readers right in the middle of the stories and time period, and
interestingly, the narrator jumps in throughout to tell readers how things turned
out. It feels very much like author Phil Oakley is telling family tales as we
sit around the kitchen table together – a reminder that this is barely a
fictionalized story. It is an efficient device because we want to know more,
and I’d have been happy to have the author show, rather than tell, us more.
“The behavior of their children was a persistent puzzle troubling Ada and Walter.”
Walt’s
and Ada’s collective pain and helplessness are palpable as their children make one
poor decision after another. Worse, even as the children grow into adults, they
seem slow to understand the heartbreak they’ve inflicted on their parents. This
passage was particularly poignant:
“Again, Ray missed the irony of what was going on around him. There were more rules in these camps than in his mother’s kitchen, and at her dining table. The work was harder than any Ray had ever done on his father’s farm, or at football practice. Most of the money Ray was earning wound up in someone else’s pocket. Half-a-dozen times since Ray had been riding on freight trains, he had been arrested, almost arrested, or beaten by men with clubs. This information didn’t take root in Ray’s mind. All he could see was that he was free and having a grand adventure.”
I
bought the eBook so I’d have the final copy and am pleased it’s so cleanly
edited, which seems to be the exception, not the rule, these days. The very few
errors I noticed aren’t enough to distract most readers (in the unlikely event they'll be noticed at
all). Oakley's writing is smooth and has a natural flow; he's clearly a natural storyteller.
At the book's conclusion, I was unsure of how many years had passed between the final chapter and the epilogue, and Runners ends somewhat abruptly. However, it does end with a small ray of hope (and that’s a double entendre), and the final page after the About the Author section assures us that a third book, titled Longhorn, is coming. I’ll definitely go back to Little Hatchet and read this family’s fascinating story from the beginning so I’ll be ready.
