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Traveling Light |
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 Traveling Light byKatrina Kittle Warner Books 310 pages, March 2000 ISBN 0446524808 Reviewed by Susan McBride Traveling Light is a first novel that explores some of the most explosive emotional issues a dysfunctional family can face, namely a son's 'coming ou't and diagnosis of AIDS, a grandmother's fatal brain tumor, a daughter's physically abusive marriage, and a young woman's coming to terms with it all and deciding what direction her own life must take. A lot to absorb yet handled skillfully by the author, neither drowning the reader in pathos nor striking any false cords. As in real life, Traveling Light is a roller coaster of feelings and relationships, of beginnings and ends. Summer Zwolenick narrates the story. Her muddled sense of direction makes the confusion around her almost seen calm in comparison. In the midst of a promising ballet career, she broke her ankle while home on the farm for a holiday. Thrown from a horse, her whole life as she saw it was tossed off-course from that point forward. She will never dance again. Her brother, Todd, is dying of AIDS, and he forces Summer to shake off her self-pity in order to spend time with him in his final days. Todd's lover Jacob, Arnicia the nurse-in-training, as well as Summer and her lover Nicholas, all take up refuge in an oversized Victorian to share in Todd's comfort, his healthcare, and buying him any time they can before he can fight his losing battle with falling T-cells and infections no longer. Ballet behind her, Summer now teaches English at her old high school in her hometown of Old Mill, Ohio. Though Nicholas wants to marry her, she is so confused about what she needs that she pushes away the man she loves. Her older sister Abby, whose appearances are rare - like the bruises on her face left by her rich husband Brad - has taken her life for what it is, not realizing that she may deserve better. Though Summer can clearly see what's wrong in Abby's life, she can't make heads or tails of her own. The dying Todd is her teacher, and she only comes to understand his lessons about 'traveling light' after he's gone. The question then becomes: Is it too late for Summer to find what she needs? Is it too late for her and Nicholas? You will feel lighter for having read this book, knowing your own family troubles are nothing in comparison. Ms. Kittle has created living, breathing human beings in Traveling Light. |
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