Review & Blog Tour: Follow Me by Joanna Scott

Sally Werner is sixteen years old in the fall of 1946 and has spent her life working hard, her parents are farmers and evangelists. At a church picnic, her twenty three year old cousin Daniel offers her a spin on his motorcycle. Impulsive Sally is thrilled to go but after a short ride he forces himself on her. Of course, pregnancy follows. She is smart enough to resist the offered (insisted on) marriage.

But she can't stand the aftermath and when her baby boy is only two days old she leaves him in his basket on the kitchen table and runs. Following the course of the Tuskee River north from its source, not even going very far, she ends up in Fishkill Notch, Pennsylvania. There she finds caring, helpful folks who open their arms and homes to her. Then she meets a young man named Mole and she is convinced her life is just beginning.

When tragedy strikes Sally pulls herself together and moves north again, into New York and farther up the river, inventing a new name for herself. This pattern will be repeated each time bad luck or hard times come into her life.

Along the way she has another child, a daughter and eventually a granddaughter, too. The guilt Sally carries over the abandonment of her son eventually prompts her to search for him and the consequences of that search will change not only her life but the lives of those she holds dear.

This is the story of a woman who, though she is far from perfect, spends much of her life trying to redeem herself for a mistake she can't forget.

The author's writing has a lovely tone to it and the narrative just sweeps the reader along. It is a well written, thoughtful story about the decisions that must be made in life and the paths through the consequences.

Follow Me is published by Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-05165-1

Many thanks to Miriam at Hachette Book Group for sending me this review copy!

Here are some of the other stops on the blogtour (I wish I could list them all, but it is a very long list!):

Medieval Bookworm
Bermuda Onion
Peeking Between the Pages
Write for a Reader
Drey's Library
Marta's Meanderings
My Friend Amy
S. Krishna's Books
Savvy Verse and Wit
Diary of an Eccentric
A Novel Menagerie