In “Gather,” Kenneth M. Cardow introduces us to a teenager who has had to grow up much more quickly than anyone should have to. Ian is used to being abandoned; his father left Ian and his mother years before, and then his grandmother left them to move south to be with her sister. So now, it’s just Ian and his mother in the small, run-down family home, on land that has been in Ian’s family for many generations. His father’s family, that is.
Ian’s mother struggles to provide for him and for herself. After injuring her back, she becomes dependent on drugs and loses her job at the nursing home. The cupboards and fridge in their house are empty, and his mother is gone when a dog shows up on the property. He’s a big dog, skinny and obviously abandoned. Ian knows what abandonment feels like, and he needs company. He doesn’t think his mom would allow the dog inside, so he fixes up the shed for the dog, whom he names Gather.
We find out a lot about Ian over the course of the novel. His real name is Dorian, after Dorian Gray, but he hates it, so everyone (almost) calls him Ian. Names are important to Ian, and what he names his dog, Gather, is an important word to Ian. You gather food, you gather your thoughts. But you also gather together ideas when telling a story, and if you are a packrat like Ian, you gather together all kinds of things that people discard because you never know when a piece of hose or a coupling or a gasket might come in useful. And when you are as handy and talented as Ian, you can repair and build a lot of things from other people’s garbage.
But what sticks in Ian’s craw for much of the book is that his incredible ability to repair things, to build things, to innovate, isn’t considered important in the educational setting. He’s frustrated by the fact that at school he is learning things that aren’t useful to him. Ian is proud of the fact that his ancestors came from France generations before and settled the land his house is on. But he’s also really frustrated that even though his ancestors were really hard workers, they were forced to sell off their land. And when the large house that they had built on the land burned down, they could only fix a small part of that building. It became the tiny place he and his mom call home.
When we first meet Ian, there is no food in the kitchen except for some cans of soup, he has no clothes that really fit him, and he has no responsible adult in his life. While his mother isn’t abusive, she’s an addict. Ian decides that a kind word to describe her situation is “sick.” And her illness is her dependency on drugs, so Ian feels that he needs to care for her. Being with his dog is the only really joyous time in Ian’s life. He can just enjoy being outside, carefree, with Gather.
Ian is lucky that he has a very caring teacher whom the students call The Sharpe. This woman is insightful, intelligent, and independent. She cares for Ian, and she is just one of the people he references in the beginning who gather around him to protect him and make sure he’s okay.
The narrative is first person, and Cadow is a talented writer whose use of metaphor is beautifully evocative. In school, Ian is studying poetry, and his teacher asks them to write a poem in the style of poets the class is studying. Ian writes a powerful poem about a tract of land where he and his father and grandfather used to hunt, which was bought and now has “no trespassing” signs posted. At the end of that chapter, Ian’s mother goes grocery shopping and makes him one of her only four recipes, a delicious mac and cheese dish. Ian tells us, “She probably made it five, six times over the next month, but that first taste, that was poetry, too.”
When a tragedy occurs, Ian and Gather are on their own. There’s no way Ian, abandoned over and over again, will abandon his dog. And we see first hand just how “educated” Ian truly is in ways that will lead to his survival. And the people who have gathered around him, who have rallied to his cause, are not going to leave him behind. While Ian has a lot to learn in life, we also see that he has a lot to share with others as well.
One of the refrains in the story is that sometimes life just boils down to luck. Ian’s grandfather was at college when his father fell and broke his leg. The grandfather had to leave college and go home to work the farm. Ian’s father was not a good father, and he had little ambition. When he left Ian and his mother and then stopped sending money to support Ian, he left them in poverty. Ian’s mother was too proud to seek help, and even when she really needed it, her pride became her downfall. Ian can’t get over the fact that other families have plenty of money, yet his family, where so many have worked so hard (and Ian works harder than practically any teenager you’ll ever read about), has almost nothing.
Ian becomes friends with Sylvia, whose father was a college professor and who lives in a huge house with her lovely family. Ian is invited over and has a long talk with Sylvia’s father, John. When John serves Ian tea from their hot water dispenser, he apologizes for the fact that the tea is too hot. He says they’ve been burning their mouths for months. Ian asks where the thermostat for the heater is, and John is astonished that there is such a thing. Ian finds it and fixes it for them.
John tells Ian the story of how he lost his job at the university, and that ironically it was over the story of Dorian Gray. He explains his belief that people are greedy and irresponsible, and we are making nature suffer as a result. Rising seas, weather changes, wildfires, diseased trees. He says, “…there’s oozing wounds on just about every part of the planet. If humans die off, nature, just like the picture of Dorian Gray, will return to its pristine form in the blink of an eye.” The juxtaposition of the educated, knowledge-filled professor and Ian, from his uneducated family, who is able to do what John is unable to do — fix the temperature on the hot water heater, is just one of the ways in which Cadow points out that knowledge doesn’t just come from school.
Be warned: you probably will cry at the end. But you will also never think of the word “gather” in the same way as before. This book reminded me of Gary Schmidt’s “Okay for Now,” even though the situations of the main characters are very different. Both are young men, boys really, trying to find their way in a world they don’t completely understand. Both are aided immensely by one of their teachers (and as a retired teacher, this pleases me inordinately), and both face heartrending tragedy. I would love to see these used as paired novels to read and discuss in a high school (or eighth grade) setting, with the students comparing and contrasting the themes in the two novels.
While many young adult books are fairly appropriate for middle grade readers, I hesitate to recommend this one to younger readers. Ian’s very realistic narrative is very much his thinking, kind of stream-of-consciousness, as he shares his thoughts with us, and he doesn’t restrict his use of profanity. He uses it naturally and without thinking, probably because in the kind of home he grew up in, that was how the men talked. It’s as if he doesn’t even realize he’s doing anything wrong, and of course, is using profanity wrong? That’s a whole different discussion to have with students.
I highly recommend this book to adults as well as young adult readers. It’s a quick read, but a powerful one, and one which should make us all think about all the different kinds of intelligences that are important. Especially for educators, it should make us stop and consider that what we are teaching students in terms of math and social studies and language arts is only part of what is important. As Cadow points out, the wealthy people in town might have a farm because they want a tax write off, but they have no idea how to actually milk a cow. They don’t know how to fix a simple machine. So what is more important in real life? Knowing how to get a tax write-off or knowing how to survive on what you have stored in your shed?
There are books that take us away to wonderful places and fantastical worlds, but this book is not one of them. This is a book that will strike at your heart, make you weep from sadness at the unfairness of life, and then make you weep with joy at the wonder of the people we gather who do the right thing and help instead of turning away. It’s a book that mirrors real life; there are cruel turns that life can take, but if we are lucky, there are people around us who will help us over the abyss and keep us safe and loved.
Please note: This review is based on the advance reader’s copy provided by Candlewick Press, the publisher, for review purposes.