She Treads Softly: Saving Myles

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Saving Myles

Saving Myles by Carl Vonderau
8/15/23; 336 pages
Oceanview Publishing

Saving Myles by Carl Vonderau is a highly recommended family drama.

Wade and his estranged wife, Fiona, are forced to send their teenage son Myles away to a treatment center after finding bags of OxyContin in his bedroom. After a year, he returns home, seemingly rehabilitated, but soon slips back into trouble. Myles and his girlfriend go to Tijuana to buy drugs, which results in Myles being kidnapped by a cartel and the cartel demanding a ransom for his return. The treatment center wiped out all their extra funds, so they are desperate to find a way to save Myles. With no help from the FBI, dealing with the cartel leads them down a dangerous path searching for another course of action.

This is a compelling well-written drama. The narrative is told in the third person, but each chapter concentrates on one of the three characters - Wade, Fiona, or Myles. Readers will feel great compassion and care about what happens to this fractured couple and their son. There are some descriptive sections to provide more information, but they just work as a way to explain events and serve to move the tension in the plot forward. This is a very tension filled novel and the suspense increases with each chapter. The plot is somewhat predictable, but is still a very satisfying family drama.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Oceanview Publishing via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.