Cruise Control

by Terry Trueman

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Gr 7 Up–This companion to Stuck in Neutral (HarperCollins, 2000) can stand alone. The first book is narrated by Shawn Daniel, 14, who is so profoundly developmentally disabled that he cannot walk, talk, or otherwise communicate, and he has frequent seizures. His older brother narrates this book. Paul is a straight-A high school senior who is also on the football, baseball, and basketball teams. He feels guilty not only about being so talented, but also because he is ashamed of his brother, whom he truly loves. Paul is deeply angry with their father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who left the family years earlier, and finds himself taking out his rage in fights with others. His journey is one of self-realization; as he leads his school's basketball team to the state championship, he learns that he is really angry with himself because of his conflicted feelings about Shawn, whom he is certain cannot think or feel anything. This powerful tale is extremely well written and will give readers an understanding of what it's like to have a challenged sibling.–Marlyn K. Beebe, City of Long Beach Public Library, CA
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From BookList, March 15, 2005, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Gr. 7-10. In this companion to Stuck in Neutral (2000), Trueman revisits the story of Shawn, the developmentally disabled teen whose point of view made that first novel so memorable. This time the narrator is Shawn's older brother, Paul, a gifted athlete. The irony of the family situation is not lost on Paul ("what a sadistic madman God must be to have thrown Shawn and me into the same family"). While Paul loves his brother, he hates their father, who, unable to cope, has abandoned the family. But Paul, like Shawn, is a victim of circumstance, and Trueman does a passionately convincing job portraying a boy who feels trapped and suffocated by responsibilities he never asked to shoulder. As he puts it, his life is "like a car roaring down the freeway in cruise control . . and I can't even slow down." Only at the end does the story stray briefly into wish-fulfillment territory, but by that time, readers will be so invested in Paul's survival that few will quibble.

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