"Stay" by Catherine Ryan Hyde

It’s the late spring of 1969. Fourteen-year-old Lucas Painter has taken to running in the woods near his small town. His running is something of an escape; his parents fight constantly. His older brother Roy is in the army in Vietnam, where the war is at its height. Lucas’s best friend Connor Barnes has a similar problem with his own parents, except they never fight. They never seem to talk to each other. 

One morning, while running in the woods, Lucas gets lost and discovers a cabin, a cabin seemingly guarded by two very large and threatening-looking dogs. He runs, the dogs give chase, and it’s a while before the frightened teen realizes that the dogs aren’t chasing him but actually running with him. The run with the dogs becomes a daily thing, until the day he finds them pacing the cabin porch and refusing to leave. Lucas looks in the window and sees an older woman in her bed, not moving. When his yelling doesn’t rouse her, he races home to call the police.

 

The woman is Zoe Dinsmore, a figure no one in town wants to talk about. She was involved in a tragedy years before Lucas was born, and the tragedy led to alcohol and drugs. She’s just tried to kill herself again. Lucas, on the advice of Zoe’s estranged daughter, tells Zoe he won’t take in her dogs if she tries again. 

 

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Zoe and Lucas become friends. When Connor begins to talk of suicide, Lucas introduces him to Zoe. And when Roy returns from Vietnam, addicted and seriously injured, Lucas manages another introduction. And somehow, all of these hurting people, grope toward helping each other.

 

Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde is their story, told by Lucas looking back to that summer, the summer when everything changed. It’s a coming-of-age novel, and it’s also something more, a story of brokenness healing itself.

 

Hyde is the author of some 34 works of fiction, including novels for both adults and young people, children’s stories, and short story collections. She’s also written four non-fiction works. The best known of her novels is Pay It Forward, which was made into a movie and helped Hyde create the Pay It Forward Foundation, which she chairs. She’s a speaker, loves horseback riding, and in 2016 took a trekking vacation in the lower ranges of the Himalayas. Her next novel, Anton, is due to be published in December.

 

Stay is a moving, often heartbreaking story, a story of a boy growing up in a tumultuous time who has to decide what’s important in his life.

“The Wake Up” by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Aiden Delacorte, 40, is a cattle rancher and horse breeder who’s been exhibiting some strange behavior. He balks at performing the normal tasks of a cattle roundup, almost injuring himself in the process. He lets his ranch hands go. His girlfriend walks away, unable to understand what’s happened to him.

Something has happened to Aiden. He’s started experiencing the feelings of the animals he’s around – cattle, horses, dogs, and even rabbits. He’d never considered what animals might experience, but he’s more than considering them now. He’s also decided to sell his cattle and get our of the cattle ranching business altogether.

He gains a new girlfriend, Gwen, new to town and with problems of her own. She has two children, 13-year-old Elizabeth, who’s easy to like, and 10-year-old Milo, who isn’t. Milo has serious behavior problems, stemming from physical abuse by his father. 

Aiden’s psychiatrist tells him he’s an empath – a person who is highly sensitive to those around him. Empathy with animals is unusual; in Aiden’s case, it may be a first step toward empathy with people. 

How theses broken people learn to understand and deal with each other is the story of The Wake Up by Catherine Ryan Hyde. And the story is compelling and difficult to put down.

Catherine Ryan Hyde

The relationship between Aiden and Milo slowly takes center stage. Aiden begins to sense Milo’s feelings, and sometimes lack of them, and tries to find a way to reach the boy. That Milo had a tendency to hurt animals doesn’t help.

Hyde is the author of more than 30 novels, the best known of which is Pay It Forward, which was released as a movie in 2000 and starred Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt. The Wake Up was published in 2017.

Hyde employs a deft use of tension between the man and the boy that ebbs and flows. Aiden gradually comes to understand how much of Milo’s story is also his own story, and the question is whether resolution can be reached for both of them. 

Top photograph by Kenny Webster via Unsplash. Used with permission.