The Road to Home

During the 19th century, many American families were packing up their belongings and headed westward in search of land, prosperity and a fresh start. In, "The Road to Home," we meet Jeremiah, a father taking his children, Remembrance, Joshua and Lily back to their home in Hartford, Connecticut. The sudden loss of their mother after the birth of Lily has forced the eldest child, Remembrance to take the mother's role for the younger siblings. On the journey back to Hartford, the construction of the Erie Canal sidetracks Jeremiah. The canal gave hope to people wanting to move towards the west. The family retreats in Rome, New York in a tavern headed by an aggressive woman named Maude Tucker. Jeremiah decides to earn extra money by joining the workers of the Erie Canal. Mem is infuriated with her father's decision to stop because she is anxious to relinquish her duties to her grandmother, aunt and cousins back home. Jeremiah promises his children he will only work for one full week and then they can continue on down the road, but the weeks rapidly pass and they remain trapped at the tavern. Mem realizes that her father has succumbed to the allure of money and cheap whiskey. He has betrayed his promise. She quickly packs up her brother and sister to embark on a treacherous journey home. On the way home, they encounter a myriad of interesting strangers. This book is truly a twisting adventure that deals with the challenges of growing up too quickly as an adolescent. "The Road to Home" would be an excellent tool for fifth and sixth grade classrooms. A teacher could easily incorporate language arts, history, music, art and math with this story.

Since her mother's descent into madness and eventual death,thirteen-year-old Mem Nye has been the one to care for her two younger siblings, seven-year-old Joshua and one-year-old Lily. When her father finally admits defeat and sells their New York frontier homestead, with the intention of returning to their old home in Connecticut, Mem believes things will finally get easier. But they only get worse. Her father, a reckless dreamer, halts their journey when it has barely started, so that he can take a job working on the Erie Canal. All week long he leaves Mem and her siblings at a tavern; on his one day home, he spends the time drunk. Finally, Mem has had enough. Determined that Joshua and Lily have a better home, she decides to take them back to the relatives in Connecticut on her own. But their journey through the wilderness will be filled with hardship and peril, and will test the limits of Mem's courage, endurance, and love. This was excellant as a historical novel, but also as a tale of a girl who is determined to make a better life for her family. I highly reccomend it. It is especially good if you read the other two books about Mem, Journey to Nowhere and Frozen Summer, but it stands on its own as well.