Catherine Ryan Hyde is a New York Times bestselling author for a good reason. Through her books and the stories she shares, she reaches into our heart and tugs gently on its strings. Her newest novel, “Rolling Toward Clear Skies,” is a lovely example of those qualities. In this emotional story, we meet Dr. Maggie Blount. She’s a divorced mother of two teenagers. She’s also a doctor. And importantly, she’s a doctor who, with her boyfriend Alex, a nurse, has a nonprofit, Doctors on Wheels.
In the opening pages of the story, we learn about what Maggie and Alex do as they are interviewed by a local newscaster, Eleanor Price, about Doctors on Wheels, which, at no cost to patients, provides medical care in the aftermath of disasters. In addition to Maggie and Alex, a retired doctor husband and wife team also accompany them in an RV. The nonprofit has a huge motor coach that is the clinic, and there is another RV for Maggie and Alex. Soon, all four are on their way to deliver help in the aftermath of a hurricane in Louisiana. While there, Maggie treats two girls who are the same age as her daughters. These girls have lost everything in the hurricane, and soon Maggie realizes that they lost their parents, too.
As the days pass, the girls, who are recovering from pneumonia, stay in the camper van, and Maggie grows attached to them. In a sad way, she realizes how sweet and unspoiled these two girls, Rose and Jean, are, especially when compared to Maggie’s own daughters. We’ve seen how her own daughters, Gemma and Willa, both seeming to be the worst of entitled, coddled, California teens, speak disparagingly and disrespectfully to their mother. Maggie doesn’t know what she did wrong to end up with such poorly behaved daughters, who seem to consistently demonstrate a moral compass that’s taken an unfortunate and disturbing turn for the worse.
Maggie can’t bear to have Jean and Rose go to a foster home with strangers after their ordeal, so she decides to foster them and bring them back to California with her. They arrive accompanied by the terrified, untrained, emaciated puppy who appeared under the camper the second night after the hurricane. Kindhearted Rose fell in love with the puppy, and Maggie simply couldn’t separate the two of them. Her daughters are not pleased. They aren’t pleased with two new “sisters,” and they aren’t pleased with a mongrel of uncertain heritage. Gemma had wanted a designer puppy from a friend’s mother who bred them. In fact, the two girls are so angry that they move out of Maggie’s house and go to stay with their father. Maggie isn’t happy about it, but she concentrates on helping Jean and Rose adjust to their new situation. Through Hyde’s depiction of the girls, it’s apparent how kind and unassuming and undemanding they are. Both are grateful for the care and affection that Maggie and Alex provide. They also adore the puppy who came back with them although the puppy has behavior issues of his own.
Hyde does a superb job of making Maggie’s daughters seem very unlikable. They are concerned with their clothes, their makeup, what their friends think. They ridicule Jean and Rose for the way they talk, the fact that they don’t care about the same things that Gemma and Willa do, and their “lesser” background. Maggie begins counseling with Jean and Rose, but Gemma and Willa refuse to attend. While Maggie loves her daughters, she doesn’t like them very much at this point.
One of the messages in this novel is that sometimes, something really bad has to happen to force change. It doesn’t seem as if Gemma and Willa will change their attitude, until during another interview with the same newscaster, disaster strikes. By speaking out about their dislike of their newly adopted sisters and how unfair the situation is, Gemma and Willa become a national disaster of their own. The cruel things they say, their all-too-obvious sense of entitlement, and their pettiness make them go shockingly viral on social media, and they are mortified. They feel that their lives are ruined.
Hyde wants us to consider that sometimes you have to reach rock bottom before, like a phoenix, you can emerge whole from the ashes, and that’s what happens after the national television debacle. We see people sticking together, sticking up for each other. We see acts of kindness and compassion even when those on the receiving end of those humane acts perhaps do not merit them. And meeting the challenge, imperfectly to be sure, are Maggie, her two biological daughters, and her two adopted daughters.
As with all of Hyde’s books, there is a happy ending after some very bittersweet events. There are truths to be faced, mistakes to be pondered, and errors to be rectified where possible. Lessons are learned and hearts and minds are changed. And in these pages, we’ve met people the likes of whom we may know, because we all have met teenagers, or even adults, who are the inevitable result of a coddled, spoiled upbringing. People who never had to work as teenagers in order to earn spending money, or people who knew that there would always be a cushion for them to fall onto if they made a mistake or needed anything. On the other hand, there are people who began working when they were young to earn pocket money and who knew that if they wanted something, they would have to work to earn it. People like that understand the need to work diligently, to be responsible, and to treat others respectfully. We see the disconnect between the two sets of girls, and we understand how hard it is for Gemma and Willa. But darn it, we just like the other two girls so much more.
Maggie seems to be an empath, feeling the emotions of those around her, especially when those emotions are strong. Hyde knows and loves animals, and she writes about two dogs who both suffer in disasters. Both dogs are much loved by children, and the second dog, Buster, was saved from a fire by his boy, his buddy, who risked severe burns to save his dog and then insisted that Maggie treat his dog before she treated him.
In this emotional narrative, there is also a place for humor. Hyde has rescued many dogs (and cats) and one event in the story must be based on an actual event Hyde experienced; it’s something all of us with pets have experienced. The new untrained puppy, the morning after they arrive back in California, has an accident in Maggie’s bedroom. Hyde writes, “She saw a loose, barely shaped mound of stool in the corner of the rug, half on the light-colored fringe and half on the hardwood floor. It was surrounded by a yellowish puddle.” Because as anyone who has ever had a puppy knows, if it’s going to have an accident on a rug, it’s going to be on the fringe, which is the most difficult part to clean.
At important points in the novel, Hyde has Maggie and her family interviewed by Eleanor Price, a local newscaster who has a Sunday morning show. The first interview, described a bit above, features just Maggie and Alex, describing their nonprofit, Doctors on Wheels. The second interview, the one also briefly described above, is the one that brings about the change in Maggie’s family; it’s when Gemma and Willa air their petty grievances in a shockingly obtuse manner. Maggie’s mother is fond of saying, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” The catastrophe that ensues after the second interview certainly causes change. And to complete the circle of change, Hyde offers us yet a third interview with the family at the end of the story. As in real life, the characters are still evolving and maturing. They are still all making mistakes; no one is perfect. But they are a family, completely and utterly. Gemma even has nice things to say about the dog she once hated. She says, “…he did turn into a nice-looking dog. Or maybe just when you love somebody they get prettier.” And as Price responds, that’s a great message for us all to take away.
Hyde knows firsthand the healing, redemptive power of a dog or cat. This novel, like so many of her books, brings to mind the fact that family is the most important thing of all—and that family is not just those who are related by blood, but also those whom we choose to bring into our lives and hearts. Equally important is the concept that while we all make mistakes, we can all change. Hyde’s writing, the dialogue, the events, and the messages are powerful and engaging. She demonstrates that through kindness and compassion, we can change, if not the world, our small piece of it.
Other books by Catherine Ryan Hyde that I highly recommend are “Life, Loss, and Puffins,” “Dreaming of Flight” (I LOVED this one!), ” “A Different Kind of Gone,” and “So Long, Chester Wheeler.”
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.