Is it a bad thing when a reviewer has a bias? Not necessarily. Sometimes it takes the voice of someone passionate about an author's work to generate the enthusiasm that gets a disinterested stranger to pick up a copy and start reading. I'll tell you right now, I have a bias about this book!
Evangeline Brown and the Cadillac Motel by Michele Ivy Davis is the story of a young girl named Evangeline ("Eddie" for short) who lives with her father in a cheap roadside motel in Florida. Her mother passed away from cancer, so Eddie and her father are alone, and her dad is both unequipped to properly parent his daughter and too numbed by alcohol to care.
Eddie spends most of her time around maladjusted adults, but she has a spirit that allows her to survive in this difficult environment. She finds a friend in Farrell, another misfit kid who lives nearby, and they embark on an adventure when they decide to take more control over their fate and run away from home together.
The strength of this book is not so much in what happens, but in the immersive world and characters Davis establishes. She has found a way to help the reader relate to the characters, even if they have nothing in common with them at all. Anyone can see themselves in the father, so overwhelmed that he just can't cope so elects to just stop trying. We've all had days like that.
We see ourselves in hotel resident Angelique, with her childlike gaudiness and dreamy angel obsession. I think everyone's got a "what was I thinking?" photo somewhere in a drawer, and we've all made choices that seemed perfectly logical at the time but in hindsight were clearly borne of immaturity.
More than anyone, we can see ourselves in Eddie, a kid who has her insecurities, yet a determination to overcome them. A mix of confidence and self-doubt, of an adventurous spirit and a trepidation when it comes to making things happen. The thrill of fear and knowing that we will push forward anyway. We relate to the characters, who are ordinary yet extraordinary, and we become a part of their world.
I too was once a young girl. I too have felt alienated in a crowd of people with whom I had nothing in common. And my mother, too, had cancer. But happily, unlike Eddie's mom, my mother survived... and went on to become the author of Evangeline Brown and the Cadillac Motel.
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- pjc
Steven Phillips