Ballantine Books, 2025
Hardcover: $29.00
Genre: Fiction
Reviewed by Edward Journey
Annie Hartnett’s third novel, The Road to Tender Hearts, is a heartfelt tale of family dynamics and dysfunction. Whether intentional or not, the book’s jacket illustration brings to mind the 2006 movie, Little Miss Sunshine; the comparison is apt since both that film and this book explore the discoveries and travails of a family road trip. Hartnett’s story is generously woven, chronicling heartbreak and hilarity.
PJ Halliday, the 63-year-old winner of a $1.5 million lottery a decade ago, lives in the small Massachusetts town of Pondville, just down the road from his ex-wife Ivy and her partner, Fred, who is PJ’s best friend and soon-to-be Ivy’s husband. Ivy and Fred look after PJ, who has breakfast with them every morning, reading morning papers in which Ivy has carefully excised any bad news about children and animals, which PJ can’t take. Ivy and PJ’s oldest daughter, Kate, died tragically on the night of her high school prom, a pain that PJ deals with by excessive drinking. Kate’s loss led to the dissolution of their marriage. Ivy and PJ’s surviving daughter, Sophie, is aloof, dealing with personal demons of her own.
Two blocks away, two children, Ollie and Luna Mecklin, are orphaned in a murder-suicide, leading to the discovery that they are PJ’s grandnephew and grandniece by his estranged brother. And Pancakes, a wry nursing home therapy cat who always knows who will be the next to die, is missing and rescued by PJ. “All cats have an ancient knowledge,” Hartnett writes, “it’s dogs that are born with a blissfully clean slate.” Meanwhile, Sophie steps in to try to take care of her dad when Ivy and Fred take off for Alaska.
It’s a lot. From this tangle emerges a six-day road trip in a borrowed Volvo with PJ, Sophie, Luna, Ollie, and Pancakes on board. Their destinations are Sugar Land, Texas, to find out if a soap opera hunk is the biological father of Luna and, ultimately, to Arizona so that PJ might woo Michelle Cobb, his recently widowed first true love, now living in Tender Hearts Retirement Community.
Through intricately detailed plotting and the exposition of flawed and instantly likable characters, Hartnett has structured a distinctly American family traveling through a uniquely American landscape. On the way to the southwest, the group travels to Niagara Falls, Hellsgate in Kentucky, an alpaca ranch, a purse museum, and a hotel with a tragic gas leak. Random hook-ups transpire for Sophie at a Waffle House and for PJ at roadside motels. Hartnett provides crucial background information in the unconventional form of bedtime stories that PJ and Sophie tell their young charges.
Long-held resentments, blame, and guilt emerge along the way, as do newly found bonds. The very generous PJ, who is “practically Mary Poppins” to Ollie and Luna, becomes aware of his dwindling bank account — $1.5 million doesn’t last forever when you’re buying iPads for the kids and rounds at the bar. Sophie’s wary and defensive nature gives way to a nurturing and protective bond with Ollie and Luna. Ollie and Luna savor the fact that there are finally adults who will listen to them and respect what they say. Annie Hartnett writes children who act and sound like real human children. Even the looming vultures watching from the trees and chanting “Alive, alive, alive” seem to root for the wellbeing of these two children. Pancakes, meanwhile, finds a person in decline at every stop along the way.
Hartnett has a way of putting the drama and tragedy of the story in perspective. A woman who has killed her husband misunderstands a phone call, and confusion ensues about whom is actually dead. As her confusion mounts and she blurts out a confession, the phone call becomes funny in its absurdity. Sophie gives herself a haircut in the bathroom of Target, and the cashier says, “Bad breakup?” Ollie has an emotional and very public crisis in a shopping mall, and, as it ends, the applauding crowd that gathers “hadn’t really understood the script, but it had been a while since there had been performance art in the mall. There had been a flash mob a few years back, but nothing like that ever since.” Later, the travelers stumble into a funeral service and aren’t sure who has died. I was surprised at how often a turn of phrase or an awkward situation made me laugh.
“How simple things are for other people,” PJ muses at one point. If he only knew. The Road to Tender Hearts is a scrappy nudge to the proverbial heartstrings that rarely falls into excess sentimentality. Occasionally, a scenario may be drawn out after the point is made, but never to the level of tedium. Like Chekhov, Hartnett can find the human comedy in the drama of flawed characters she clearly loves. The reader is likely to fall in love with them, too.
Edward Journey, a retired university professor and theatre professional living in Birmingham, regularly shares his essays in the online journal “Professional Southerner” (www.professionalsoutherner.com).
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