Quirky isn’t usually my thing, and Annie Hartnett’s latest novel, The Road to Tender Hearts, is most decidedly quirky (just ask Pancakes, the death-predicting cat). The events are bizarre and often tragic, and the characters are eccentric. But at the core of this novel, there is a warmth and genuineness that breaks through its comically dark outer layer.
The story starts with a slew of those bizarre events that ultimately unite main character PJ Halliday, a 63-year-old lottery winner with a long history of drinking and letting people down, with his estranged brother’s young grandchildren, Luna and Ollie.
PJ is not about to let their sudden existence in his life stop him from his latest endeavor, a road trip from his home in Massachusetts to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona, where he plans to woo his high-school crush, recently single again after losing her spouse. (PJ learns about that in the newspaper obits, not because he’s been in contact with her, so this visit will be a fun surprise for her.)
Also joining the trip, begrudgingly, is PJ’s 20-something daughter, Sophie, who is simmering with decades’ worth of anger toward her often absent alcoholic father. She has been tasked by her mother — PJ’s ex-wife, Ivy — to take care of him while she is away in Alaska with her fiance, Fred. So Sophie feels obligated to act as babysitter, for Ollie and Luna, and also for her dad.
The motley road-trip crew is rounded out by Pancakes, who has recently wandered into PJ’s life after a stint as a therapy cat at a nursing home.
If PJ were written in any other way, I think I would have hated him as a character. But somehow Hartnett makes me want to root for him. He, pitifully, thinks of Ivy and Fred as his best friends. He goes to their house for breakfast every morning, and he’s devastated when they don’t invite him on their trip.
When Ivy and Fred leave, PJ decides to quit drinking, again.
“PJ had never had a detox as bad as that one, not even when he had to go to prison for six weeks for the drunk driving, but once the detoxing was over, PJ had a new outlook. … When Ivy and Fred got home in September, he could be a new man. He wanted to be a man who was worthy of being their best man. Without the booze, PJ started feeling hopeful.”
It’s kind of hard not to feel for an old man who is so lonely and accepting of his own faults that he settles for being the third wheel in his ex-wife’s relationship. He’s lived his fair share of tragic events, too, which we start to learn more about as the road trip gets underway.
But for every moment or memory of darkness, there is also light, in the form of sweet moments between characters, hope for better things to come and the perfect amount of well-placed fatalistic humor.
Take, for instance, when Pancakes jumps out of a window of the moving car as Sophie and the kids try to track down a missing PJ. Ollie comments that Pancakes is “suicidal without Uncle PJ.” In fact, Pancakes is pulling a Lassie, leading the crew to PJ, who had been hit by a car while walking back to the motel from a bar after having just one drink and deciding he needed to go back to his family. The car was driven, ironically, by the man he’d been chatting with in the bar whose sad story was that he’d killed his wife when driving drunk. PJ survives the accident with minor injuries, but the man does not.
Emotions run high throughout the trip, as PJ battles his own inner demons, Sophie grapples with her dad’s still-not-great behavior and the kids adjust to their new reality as orphans — although Luna is having none of that. She is convinced her real dad is a famous actor who used to live in their town and whom her mom had always said she’d briefly dated. Luna wants to track him down and make him take a paternity test. This would get PJ off the hook as guardian, so he agrees to veer off course for Luna’s heartbreaking endeavor to find a family.
It’s all very sad, but also funny and genuine. The story could have been depressing, but it’s not. The characters are all well-developed and unique, and PJ’s growth feels honest and real. He’s somehow a loveable underdog, despite his constant lapses in judgment.
The Tender Hearts the title is referring to, presumably, is Tender Hearts Retirement Community, as they are literally on the road driving to that destination. But The Road to Tender Hearts could also describe the path PJ is taking to rebuild his heart with compassion and empathy. It could be the softening of Sophie’s heart as she sees her dad trying to be better and do better. It could be the unwitting journey PJ is taking into Ollie and Luna’s tender hearts.
I’m glad I didn’t let my thoughts of “this is so weird” as I read the first few pages stop me from taking this journey with them. A-
Featured Photo: The Road To Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett