In the Family Way : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: "In The Family Way" ... a worthy investment for your time .
Review: This book is anchored in a specific time and place ... early 60's upstate South Carolina ... and yet beautifully evokes the timeless and universal themes of love, loss, and renewal.

Hays' voice for his "hero," young Jeru Lamb, is uncannily true and the narration of an older Jeru, who tells the story, is perceptive and wise. My favorite quote: "It was not lost on me that by expecting the worst every breathing moment, I backed into prophecy once in a while."

The story is bittersweet but life-affirming and it ends both appropriately and the way you'd want it to. I give it my highest recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: This is the best book I have read all year.
Review: This book is not only a refreshing, beautifully written, realistic, and entirely credible account of a boy's struggle to make sense of the world and his own family, but it is also the reassurance that there is at least one modern writer who can truly capture a story and an entire life within the pages of a novel, a writer who deserves to be remembered just as his words will be remembered forever. Hays has breathed life into a family and an entire 1960s Southern town, making this created world as real as our own lives today. Not only is this story heartwarming and the characters people I wish I knew, but the writing itself is purely magic in words, a poetic portrayal in the hard-to-reach area between literary snobbery and lackluster simplicity. This writing will produce both laughter and tears, and will leave the reader changed, somehow finding a piece of himself in little Jeru, and realizing that a piece of Jeru will remain in his own heart long after the book has been placed back on the shelf.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, well written, realistic view of the 60's.
Review: Tommy Hays is a very talented writer, and it shows in this book. "In The Family Way" is about a family that has suffered the loss of a loved one. Jeru, the oldest son, has to deal with his mother's turning to Christian Science, and his father spending most of his time in the basement working on writing a book, due to the death of his brother Mitchell. Hays manages to put as much detail into the setting of the story as possible. He writes about how many restaurants and other public facilities, including Jeru's school, only allowed white people. This is a very compelling story and I highly recommend it.