Now, we see through a glass, darkly...

Jeffrey Ricker scares me.

It seems like any time I pick up his work these days, I find he’s tapped into my brain (The Unwanted: the answer to my teenage fantasies; Fool for Love’s “At the End of the Leash” feeds my love of dogs and my secret voyeuristic streak; Riding the Rails’ “Mount Olympus” brought back memories of the television miniseries of Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles from my childhood, while also reminding me of Burroughs’ John Carter series, and a smidge of my favorite show from the late ‘70s Buck Rogers; and Night Shadows' “Blackout”: if Ricker knows about that night back in Pennsylvania with the Voodoo book – well, then I really am freaking scared). See, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear his fingers were clamped on my face in a Vulcan mind meld.

But with Detours, that connection became a bit uncomfortable.

In the novel, Joel returns from a trip to London, where he might just have met the man of his dreams, only to learn that his mother has unexpectedly died. To fulfill her final wish, Joel drives his parents’ RV cross country to its new owner on the west coast. Along the way, he quits his job, somehow picks up the brother of an ex-girlfriend, makes a lot of food, dumps the same brother of the same ex-girlfriend, visits and gets drunk with his mother’s childhood friends, makes a lot more food, and–oh, yeah–talks to the ghost of his mother, like a lot. All of which made for an entertaining (albeit somewhat detour-laden) road trip. In the midst of all of this it became clear just how directionless Joel actually was.

Earlier in his life, he had had a vision for his future, a plan in mind for what he wanted to accomplish. Dreams. But somewhere along the way all of that evaporated. Nothing tragic caused it. No great turn of events brought it about. It simply…was. And it was in that quiet dissolution of Joel’s life that Ricker’s talents truly shone.

I kept waiting for the big reveal, the explanation of why Joel was allowing life to happen to him rather than making life happen for him. The further I read, the more frustrated I became waiting for some explanation of where Joel had gotten so off track, why his life was such a mess—anything that might justify the pointlessness of his existence. But it didn’t come, and ultimately I realized it didn’t matter. What did matter was stepping out of that rut and finding a new path.

And it was those first tentative steps Joel took at the end of the book that made all my questions and frustrations worthwhile. And it was there, toward the end, that I found the line that best sums up this book for me:

Maybe it’s a mercy we can only see ourselves through a reflection.

Detours is a witty, entertaining, romantic road trip. It’s also an insightful exploration of what happens when our lives become static and what it takes to get us back on track. Nicely done, Jeffrey.

Now, stay out of my head.