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All We Had: A Novel Hardcover – August 5, 2014
For thirteen-year-old Ruthie Carmichael and her mother, Rita, life has never been stable. The only sure thing is their love for each other. Though Rita works more than one job, the pair teeters on the edge of poverty. When their landlord kicks them out, Rita resorts to her movie-star looks and produces carpet-installer Phil, "an instant boyfriend," who takes them in.
Before long, Ruthie convinces her mother to leave and in their battered Ford Escort, they head East in search of a better life. When money runs out and their car breaks down, they find themselves stranded in a small town called Fat River where their luck finally takes a turn. Rita lands a steady job waitressing at Tiny’s, the local diner. With enough money to pay their bills, they rent a house and Fat River becomes the first place they call home.
Peter Pam, Tiny’s transgender waitress and the novel’s voice of warmth and reason, becomes Ruthie’s closest friend. Arlene, the no-nonsense head waitress, takes Rita under her wing. The townspeople—Hank and Dotty Hanson, the elderly owners of the embattled local hardware store, and even their chatter-mouth neighbor Patti—become Ruthie and Rita’s family.
Into this quirky utopia comes smooth-talking mortgage broker Vick Ward, who entices Rita with a subprime loan. Why rent when you can own? Almost as soon as Rita buys a house their fortunes change. Faced once again with the prospect of homelessness, Rita reverts to survival mode, and the price she pays to keep them out of poverty changes their lives forever.
Accomplished visual artist Annie Weatherwax has written a stunning, heartrending first novel. Ruthie’s wry voice and razor sharp observations about American life in the twenty-first century infuse the prose with disarming honesty and humor. All We Had heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice in contemporary fiction.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherScribner
- Publication dateAugust 5, 2014
- Dimensions5.75 x 1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-101476755205
- ISBN-13978-1476755205
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A fresh voice that sculpts with words in a way that's as beautiful as it is brutal. I love this story and the hands that crafted it.” -- Patricia Cornwell
“Smart and unflinchingly honest and brilliantly voiced, All We Had is a remarkably accomplished and compelling first novel. Annie Weatherwax’s other artistic persona as a visual artist has made her an instant expert at one of the most challenging but fundamental skills of a fiction writer: the ability to render the moment to moment sensual thereness of a scene. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.” -- Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
"Gritty and convincing.... A remarkably authentic story of folks on the skids... Weatherwax's smart style, crisp narrative, sharp dialogue, and vivid descriptions send a powerful message: there is hope hidden in despair." ― Publishers Weekly
"Infuses gritty humor and poignancy into the story of the hardscrabble existence of a mother and daughter… Weatherwax's tight dialogue and short, emotionally charged scenes examine hope, the meaning of home and the unbreakable bond of love between mother and daughter.” -- Kathleen Gerard ― Shelf Awareness
"A vivid journey into the dark side of the American Dream... alternates between black comedy and heart-breaking realism... an enjoyable read that takes an important look at economic insecurity." -- Betty J. Cotter ― Providence Journal
"Part commentary on the subprime crisis past, comic novel All We Had keeps you reading for its small observations." -- Leigh Newman ― O, The Oprah Magazine
“The most profound insights in All We Had have to do with the potential hidden costs of ‘economic recovery’…There’s much to recommend this lovely debut novel, but the best of its virtues are these truths.” -- Stacia Brown ― The Washington Post
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER TWO
Deliverance
When I think about my mother, I think about our car—a 1993 Ford Escort. It was the only thing we owned. I was ten when we bought it from a lot on West High Street. The salesman had thick leathery skin with lines crisscrossing his face as if a kid had scribbled on him with a Sharpie.
He kept telling my mother how everything about the car was deluxe. The seats, the windows, the wipers—even the blower for the AC and heat were all high-speed and deluxe. But he had a really big lisp so the word sounded more like de-lux-thh. I remember the visible splatter of spit. It was gross.
My mother didn’t notice, though. She was too busy admiring the car. Walking around it, coquettishly grazing her fingers over the hood.
“Do the seats go back?” she asked, batting her eyes, donning a fake Dolly Parton southern accent.
I don’t know how she did it, but if just one person from Lifetime TV could see her acting, she’d become a superstar overnight.
Her performance that day was so good it took her only ten minutes.
“A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do,” she said, emerging from his office, swaying her hips and dangling the keys off her fingertips. Back then I had no idea what that meant. “It’s just the way life works,” she added, which cleared up exactly nothing.
As I got older her explanations became less wordy. “I only blow them, I don’t fuck them. There’s a difference, you know.”
We stopped and sold what we could—Phil’s DVD player, sound system, and old laptop. The rest of it, the guy said, was junk. So we put it back in the car and made our way past all the neighborhood places—the laundromat where the owner shook her cane and cursed if you didn’t clean the lint tray, the cash checks here! and cell phones for cheap! place, and Glamour Glitz, where my mother once worked sweeping hair. Broken-down cars sat on cinderblocks in every other driveway. Engines, batteries, spark plugs, and cables were strewn about like guts. Brightly colored plastic baby crap cluttered the front yards of run-down houses. We rode by shacks and empty parking lots and a spattering of makeshift churches with hand-painted signs, jesus has risen! and jesus saves! and one that just had his name spray-painted at an angle across the door.
My mother loved to drive her car. There was a dent in the middle of the hood, a rattle in the trunk, and once in a while the car backfired. But she would steer it, palm open on the wheel, as if she were gliding down Hollywood Boulevard in a Cadillac.
That day, though, she looked as if she’d just buried a friend. She sat stiff and grim in her seat. The road in front of us, littered with garbage, reflected in her sunglasses. Her jaw jutted forward. She looked straight ahead but I could tell she was seeing nothing.
“You didn’t love him,” I ventured.
She shook her head. “What do you think, life is one big Hallmark moment? Pfft,” she sputtered. “Love, that’s a good one.”
She went back staring dismally out the window. I let some time pass before I spoke again.
“He had a pencil dick,” I reminded her.
“I could have dealt with that,” she said.
“His mustache was always covered with crud.”
“He wiped it off,” she argued.
“His crack was always showing and he had pimples on his neck.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. I saw one.”
She mumbled something to herself and shook her head again.
My mother’s mood could backslide fast. I waited, then tried a more subtle approach.
“You know what I think? I think our pool should have a slide.”
The mere thought of having a pool could bathe my mother with light. “A pool . . .” she’d sigh, a glint twinkling in her eyes. But this time, nothing in her stirred.
“We could build an outdoor bar,” I added. With this she glanced at me. “And we could get those giant umbrellas to set up everywhere.”
She considered this. “Would they tilt?”
“Of course!” I said a little overenthusiastically. “We wouldn’t think of having any other kind. And we could get those rafts—you know, the ones that have a place to put your cocktail.”
“I love those,” my mother said as I knew she would.
“It’s going to be awesome. We’ll put a cabana on one end and a snack bar on the other and maybe we’ll have a diving board, too.”
A few minutes went by. We were driving under the overpass to Route 57. The beams above were streaked with bird shit, some of it dripping and wet.
“You know what . . .” she said. She pulled the car over, put it in park, took her sunglasses off, and twisted in her seat to look at me. Through the seam in the pavement above us a sliver of light fell across her face. It flickered like a strobe as the cars thump-thump-thumped overhead.
“I’ve been thinking. You’re right. I think it’s time for a change of scenery. What are we waiting for? We have a car and we have money now.” It was true, we got $950 for Phil’s stuff and we hardly ever had that kind of ready cash. “And you know what else?” my mother added. “I think it’s time you and I head to Boston. We’re going to end up there anyway.”
My mother was not certain about much, but one thing she knew for sure was that I was smart enough to get into any college, and Boston, according to her, had all the best schools.
She and I had lived on and off the street, or in shelters. We moved in and out with boyfriends—sometimes with breathtaking speed. The few times that we could afford to rent our own apartment never lasted. Even when my mother worked four jobs, it was hard for us to pay our rent. And we never stayed in one place for more than six months. But I hardly ever missed a day of school. She made certain that every school system knew who I was and where the bus should pick me up.
“Yup.” My mother nodded, agreeing with herself. “Harvard is going to hand you a scholarship, I just know they are.”
I didn’t really see how I’d end up in college, but the thought of it could bring her out of any slump.
“Maybe when I graduate, I’ll become a doctor,” I said.
“Oh my God. I was just thinking the same thing. You’d make an excellent one.”
A smattering of garbage blew down the street and sprinkled the hood of the car. She grabbed her pack of cigarettes off the dashboard, lit one, then pitched the match out the window. “I’m even thinking that when we get to Boston,” she said, shifting the car into gear, “once and for all”—she took a long hard drag—“I’m going to quit smoking.” She blew the smoke sideways out the window. “Dammit, let’s do it.” She stepped on the gas and we drove out from under the dark overpass and into the light of the wide-open freeway.
We went from zero to sixty in no time. I was out of school and she was out of work. We had no place to be and not a thing to lose.
With the windows open, strands of my mother’s hair flicked and flashed in the sunlight, trailing behind her like ribbons. In between places was my favorite place to be. With the past behind us and the promise of better things ahead, few things ever felt as good.
I stuck my head out the window. The rush of air whipped around my face, flapped my lips, and made my eyelids flutter.
Gas tanks and power grids raced by. Mounds of gravel zigzagged across the earth and cranes punctuated the sky at sharp angles. When the city receded in my mirror, it couldn’t go fast enough.
My mother glanced over at me and smiled. She reached forward, pushed a CD into the player, and turned the volume up.
“We—are—fam-i-ly. I got all my sisters with me!” Sister Sledge—our favorite and the theme song to our lives—blared out. We swayed and sang the lyrics at the top of our lungs. The freeway widened, the landscape emptied out. The engine hummed and I pictured the car lifting off the ground. We’d sail across mountains and by clouds, we’d dip in and out with the birds. “Look, there’s China!” I’d shout. We’d hover just long enough to wave at all the people. Then we’d surge into orbit, leaving only the rush of sound and a white, wavy streak in the sky behind us.
This was how our story always went. With the wind at our backs we soared like bandits narrowly escaping through the night. And no matter where life took us or how hard and fast the ride, we landed and we always stayed together.
Daylight faded. The sky became a show of waning color. Yellows shimmered into blues. The sun singed the underside of clouds with orange. Poetry was everywhere.
Then, boom!—the car backfired. A burst of sparks erupted from the tailpipe.
“Oh my God!” I yelled. “We’re on fire!” My mother looked in her rearview mirror. When she swerved off the road and slammed on the brakes, an assortment of Phil’s shit went flying.
She grabbed her purse and we both jumped out. Smoke poured from the back end. My mother thought fast. She clicked in her heels to the passenger side of the car, ducked in the window, and grabbed her supersize Diet Coke from the holder.
“Stand back!” she yelled. In a single dramatic motion, she chucked the top on the ground and pitched the Coke at the muffler.
With a startling pop and a hiss, a giant vaporous cloud enveloped us and we doubled over choking. My mother took her bag off her shoulder, covered her mouth, and coughed into it.
Her purse was black vinyl, and oddly shaped like a giant pork chop. She never went anywhere without it and, like a man with a Swiss army knife, she used it for everything. She jammed parking meters and fixed vending machines by batting them hard on the side with her bag. I’d seen her use it as a weapon. She’d wind it up, let it go, and with the shoulder straps flying, it’d spin through the air until bam! she’d hit her target every time. She used it as a pillow on the bus. She swatted flies and shaded her eyes from the sun with it. I’d seen her hold it up against the wind and rest it on her head when it rained. And sometimes it just punctuated her mood. She’d fling it fast and hard on the ground, or lob it, tired and slow, on the couch.
“For Chrissake.” She flapped her bag up and down this time, using it as a fan.
“Really,” I coughed, “who knew Diet Coke was so toxic?”
Once it was safe, my mother inched her way forward. Clutching her purse, she bent over slowly and peered underneath the car.
It was almost dark by then. The freeway had quieted. A warble of insects pulsed through the air.
“The muffler’s dragging on the ground,” my mother reported from her bent-over position. She stood up and pushed her bag back on her shoulder. She put the key in the trunk. It popped and with a creak, slowly opened.
When we robbed Phil, we ended up with a lot of worthless stuff like his coffee mugs that said my love is like diarrhea, i can’t hold it in. “Collector’s items,” he’d claimed. We stole his blender that only worked when the kitchen light was on and his toaster that set the toast on fire if you didn’t dig it out.
But the only thing we took that I really wanted weighed a thousand pounds. In the patch of dirt and dead grass in front of Phil’s building I’d found a cement statue of the Virgin Mary. She was lying on her back with bird shit on her forehead.
When I grow up, I want to be a preacher so I can set the record straight. Religion is a hoax and when I read the Bible, I really did not like it. The characters were all flat, the dialogue was bad, and the imbalance of power cheapened the plot. In my version, Mary would play a bigger role. She’d rise up, take control, and set the world straight. As it is, she’s just written right out of the book, which for me was like killing off the movie star in the very first act. I wrote a paper on this topic for class and got an A-plus-plus on it.
I collected Mother Mary figurines. I had a string of plastic Mary lights that blinked on and off when you plugged them in. I found a porcelain one on the street in perfect condition, and I had a teeny-tiny hand-blown glass piece that I kept in a cardboard jewelry box. My favorite, though, was the Mary I had glued to our dashboard. Her eyes rolled back into her head as if she found life endlessly boring. There were others, but none as big as the one lying in our trunk.
The streetlight cast her cement-gray complexion a cold and stony blue. A swirl of lingering smoke drifted by her. A dog barked in the distance. A breeze kicked up on the freeway behind us and sprinkled Mary with dust. I picked up a rock and threw it just to watch it sail through the air and hear it drop.
“I’m sorry, Ruthie.” My mother laid a hand on my shoulder. “But the weight of her is dragging us down.”
We left the Holy Mother facing the road. Backlit by a line of trees, her outline glowed. She gazed upward toward heaven—waiting, it seemed, for a ray of light to deliver her from evil and take her home.
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner (August 5, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1476755205
- ISBN-13 : 978-1476755205
- Item Weight : 12.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.75 x 1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,325,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #26,877 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #37,391 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #50,770 in Contemporary Women Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Annie Weatherwax's stories have appeared in The Sun Magazine, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She was the 2009 winner of the Robert Olen Butler Prize for Fiction and has written for The New York Times. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, for years she earned a living sculpting superheroes and cartoon characters for Nickelodeon, DC Comics, Pixar and others. She is currently a full time painter and writer. www.annieweatherwax.com
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The narrative begins as Ruthie and Rita need to vacate another unstable home. The protagonist, thirteen-year-old Ruthie, has not had an easy life, yet she gives amazing strength and voice to this novel. She is edgy, smart and funny, and despite the difficult situations she is placed in, she always manages to have empathy for others. When she finally finds a “family” in Fat River, we watch her relationships develop and see the depth of her character. Ruthie is brave and kind, and intensely loyal. Rita, Ruthie’s mother, might not always make the greatest choices for her daughter, but we grow to understand her limitations and see that she is doing the best that she can. This complicated mother-daughter relationship feels poignant and authentic. Ruthie must often take on the role of caretaker, and although there are moments when it’s difficult not to feel angry at Rita, we understand that she is a product of her history and circumstance. All of the characters, so complete and well-drawn, with their beauty and flaws, pull us into this narrative and move the story forward at a perfect pace. And how can you not fall in love with Peter-Pam, the warm, witty, and utterly charming waitress.
But what makes this book so outstanding is the hope it gives us—hope that there is a better life, that Ruthie can rise above the chaos and dysfunction, and that compassion and kindness really do make a difference.
Every character is unforgettable. One of the best novels I’ve read in a long time.
"When I thought about hell, I thought about life without my mother. She was all I ever really had. I tried to picture who I'd be without her and the only image that came to mind was of a ghost."
Thirteen-year-old Ruthie and her mother, Rita, often lived life on the fringes. Rita isn't above using her body or her sexuality to get what she wants, especially if it means ensuring a better life for the two of them. Rita smokes like crazy and likes to drink, but the one thing she knows for sure is that Ruthie is tremendously intelligent and is destined for great things.
The trouble is, most of the men Rita latches onto look good for a little while, and they save her and Ruthie from certain disaster, but their true selves are ultimately revealed, which leads to the need for a rapid and furtive escape. (Although they're not above taking a few parting gifts from these men on their way out the door.)
"This was how our story always went. With the wind at our backs we soared like bandits narrowly escaping through the night. And no matter where life took us or how hard and fast the ride, we landed and we always stayed together."
When Rita and Ruthie land in the small town of Fat River they don't plan to stay, but their battered vehicle decides otherwise. Through the mercy of Mel, who owns Tiny's, the local diner, Rita is able to get a steady waitressing job, and Ruthie is also able to make some money as a dishwasher. The two are able to let their guards down enough to make friends with Arlene, the tough-but-compassionate head waitress, and Peter Pam, Mel's nephew and the diner's transgender waitress. Rita and Ruthie are able to save enough money to rent a small, dilapidated house, which is actually the first place they can call their own, and their coworkers and neighbors become their extended family.
While Ruthie is content to live her life in Fat River, especially since they were able to buy their house thanks to the help of a crooked mortgage lender, it's not long before Rita starts feeling restless and their security starts rapidly going downhill. With seemingly no other solution, Rita relies once again on her feminine wiles to keep them out of poverty. But the decision that Rita makes has a tremendous impact on her relationship with her daughter.
Many books have been written about the often-tempestuous relationship between mothers and daughters, particularly those struggling to make something of their lives. Annie Weatherwax's All We Had is a sweet, enjoyable addition to this genre. The characters are well-drawn and tremendously engaging, and they seem larger than life without being caricatures of themselves. While you probably can predict how the plot will unfold, you're still captivated enough to want to keep reading.
My only criticism of the book is that at times it seemed like each chapter was an anecdote or interrelated short story rather than a continuous narrative. It almost was as if Weatherwax was trying to say, and here's yet another example of Rita's behavior. It didn't ultimately detract from my enjoyment of the book, but it felt a little less whole, if that makes sense. In the end, however, the vividness of the characters and the heart that Weatherwax imbued her story with really win you over.
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It felt like quite an unconventional book to me because I don't normally read books like this one, but it was definitely I nice change.
With its 257 pages it's quite short but contains a lot of content and a lot happens in it.
At the beginning, the narrator, a 13-year-old girl who grows up during the book, came across very angry and vengeful to me and I don't think I've ever read a story with characters as broke and messed up as the mother and daughter in this one. But the fact that they were so poor and therefore so ruthless and reckless in their behaviour made the book actually quite thrilling to read because they always went to such extremes that were sometimes hard to read. I often didn't even want to imagine what I was reading. For example when they pulled out an infected teeth with their bare hands or when they described the dirt and mess they were living in.
The book felt quite controversial, unusual and thought-provoking which I really liked because its main characters were just so different to characters I normally read about.
This book did portray men in the absolute worst light and did not really leave any room for exceptions to the assumption that all men are predators. That attitude towards men made the book feel even angrier to me but there is the slight acknowledgement of Ruthie, that her mother brings out the worst in men which gives Rita some responsibility for the behaviour of the men - but in general, it is no wonder that Ruthie says in the end that she can't trust women and is afraid of men.
What surprised me a lot in this book was the shining character that was Peter Pam. It's hard to describe Peter Pam in my opinion, even though the back of the book calls her transgender, I'm not sure if she really is because I didn't read the back of the book before I finished reading the book and for me she was a drag queen. Peter created this character called Peter Pam and dressed up to become her. Either way, Peter Pam was definitely a highlight of this story. She reminded me a bit of Lafayette from True Blood now that I think about it.
The writing style of it made it even more thrilling to read because the chapters were relatively short and always titled with a noun that gave away the general mood of the chapter which I found very fascinating. There were chapters titled "Anger", "Hunger", "Humiliation", "Loyalty" or "Perversion". It always made one wonder what this would mean and how the following chapter would portray this word. I think that was a well-chosen strategy to keep the interest in the reader high.
I felt like this book was brutally real when it came to depicting the lives of poor people in the US and I wasn't prepared for how raw it was in its honesty. It's definitely not a comforting book but a book that makes you think and that confronts you with a reality that is easier to forget about but is so important to read and talk about because poverty exists and needs to be talked about.
My copy of the book promotes the movie adaption directed by and starring Katie Holmes on its front cover and I am quite curious as to how she put this story on the screen, so hopefully I'll watch it soon.
Annie Weatherwax does a fabulous and smooth job of telling a tale of adversity and mayhem through the eyes of an adaptable and adventurous teenager. The characters jump off the page. It is both funny and poignant.