Written by
Charles Martin and published in 2008 by Nelson, Thomas, Incorporated; ChasingFireflies is a story about family and searching for the truth.
Seconds
before a train crashes into her Impala, a woman; on an apparent suicide run
kicks her little boy out of the car. The
boy is found a day later wandering near the tracks with horrific wounds and
scars that would suggest a lifetime of chronic abuse. He can’t remember his name and therefore the
mute boy is known to the state as John Doe 117.
Journalist
Chase Walker is sent to write a story about the little boy. Chase finds that even though the boy is mute,
he is far from silent. An artistic
prodigy that excels at chess, the little boy’s life mirrors Chase’s own past
and Chase soon realizes he is writing more than just a story about the boy, he
wants to help him. Chase Walker was
abandoned as a child. He grew up in
various boys’ homes before finally settling in with a couple he calls Uncle
Willee and Aunt Lorna. Even though
Willee and Lorna provide all that Chase could ever need, he still looks down
the drive hoping to see his real father come to claim him.
Uncle Willee
has led one tragic life. Director of his
father’s bank, he is sentenced to prison after his father and wife are murdered
and the townspeople’s bonds are stolen from the bank vault. Willee has to sell most of his land to cover
the cost of the bonds and signs over custody of his young son to the state to
keep him safe. But his young boy is
taken at ransom and so Willee must sell more of his land to recover the
boy. The ransom goes foul and Willee’s
son is found burned and dead on the courthouse steps. After a mysterious pardon releases Willee
from prison, he marries Lorna and together they become foster parents, taking
in the children no one wants and trying to give them the life that Willee was
unable to provide for his son.
This is a
remarkable story. I don’t even know how
I could begin to describe it. It’s
essentially about a grown man trying to live with the knowledge that his
parents abandoned him and that he has no idea what his real name is. He spends the better part of his life trying
to find the truth, trying to find his heritage.
Chase also wants to find the truth about the bank robbery and murders
that cost Uncle Willee everything he ever had.
This story is also about love, and how love can fill in the void we all
have in our hearts. Love gives names to
the nameless and voices to the voiceless.
When Uncle Willee’s niece Tommye comes back from Los Angeles, Martin
shows us how different people deal with adversity and what the after effects
are. Tommye runs away from her demons,
she runs all the way to Los Angeles to escape but in doing so she runs right
into more bad decisions that could ultimately cost her her life. Willee doesn’t run, but he never fights back
either. The townspeople mock him, spit
on him, hate him for what they think he did and through it all Willee turns the
other cheek. Oftentimes you find
yourself shouting, “stand up for yourself Willee!” The differences between the two are
remarkable, but the one similarity is that love brought them back. Chase and Willee’s love for Tommye brought
her back to the girl they once knew. And
Willee’s love for Chase, Lorna, and Tommye kept him from becoming a broken man.
Martin uses
a lot of backstory and flashback storytelling to weave this tale. It sometimes feels jumbled and disjointed,
but it all ties together in the end and the backstory gives all the characters depth
that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.
His characters are memorable and loveable and you really feel yourself
rooting for them. It’s often
frustrating to see just how tragic their lives have been, Martin piles on a lot
of sadness in this book. One of the
underlying themes in this book is that life is hard and unfair and it’s how you
deal with the bad that makes you who you are.
You take the bad with the good and live in it. As Willee says, “It’s the bad that lets you
know how good the good really is.” When
you do find the really good in life, nothing compares.
I really
liked this book. It’s tragic and
heartbreaking with a bittersweet ending, but the overall message is lovely, Martin’s prose is delightful and his likeable characters keep you turning the
pages. This is a book I would read again and again, and I am definitely going to read more of Martins work. I give this book an A-
grade. This is a wonderful book for
fathers and sons to read. It’s Southern
storytelling at its best with baseball, fishing and the story of a bond between
a boy and a father-figure that is like nothing else in this world.
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