Perpetuates all the pernicious myths about romantic love, by an author who ought to know better.
Substance: Luke Millward goes to New Orleans to search for his father Charles, missing since Hurricane Katrina hit; falls in love; discovers he really does love his father despite giving him the brush-off over the years because of his drunken importuning. The author sets up a complex "scam" by Charlie's newest set of friends, including a black fiancee some years younger, but doesn't really pull it off, because he leaves out a lot of necessary supporting items, doesn't motivate the deception in a rational way, and doesn't need it anyway.
IMO, Wright goes for emotional catharsis on-the-cheap, enlisting the truly tragic stories of Katrina to give credence to the faux-epiphany of a selfish brat wallowing in self-pity. Sure, it's hard, as an adolescent, to have a mother commit slow suicide-by-prescription (although we really don't get any motivation for her extreme reaction to the death of her mother); and to have a father take refuge in alcohol for not being able to save his beloved. However, the author skips the period where Charles stumbles through his alcoholism and Luke distances himself (rather self-righteously) to providing occasional monetary support and NO emotional or physical assistance.
If you can't tell, I didn't like the protagonist.
Style: Wright indulges himself in the flash-back, flash-forward, and skip-around-the-chronology style that I find very irritating when the author fails to adequately locate his character at each time and place. He reaches for emotional effect by pushing TV-conditioned buttons.
Compare to "Train to Potevka". Wright drops some hints that he is LDS (is he?), but doesn't use LDS characters.
NOTES: SPOILER ALERT
p. 68: "interweb" - does anyone really use this term, especially in 2005?
p. 109: "ya'll" - from an author giving his protagonists a Texas background, reproducing speech in Mississippi. (To be fair, lots of Southerners mispell the word, because they are not taught properly, but there is no excuse for a professional writer, or his editors, to perpetrate this blatant ignorance of contractions. FWIW, you all -> y'all.)
p. 115: bad editing again: parents of three graduates, but four students' names are given (two appear to be twins, but that's no excuse).
p. 138: "Dumb word -- teetotaler...Makes me think of tea. Why ain't it beer-totaler?"
Was Wright looking for irony or sarcasm, or just personally ignorant here? And the comment makes no sense anyway, referring to a person who abstains from alcohol.
p. 157: If Charlie could still play the sax and guitar so well in New Orleans, why don't we hear about him playing in LA and all the other places he ends up?
p. 186: (in re a couple of rude cops, although the protagonists provoke the reaction themselves) "Actually I always remind myself there are unkind, unethical, untoward people in every line of work. And sometimes otherwise good people have very bad days."
A worthwhile observation by Luke, although he doesn't ever come across as the kind of man who actually lives by it.
p. 193: Luke and Jez (the fiancee) analyze Charlie in absentia, arguaing over which of them knew him best; I think this is supposed to be the crux of the book: "Luke, we don't get to decide how many chances a man gets to recover. He gets as many as it takes. Your dad needed one more in New Awlins, and he got it. And thank the Lord he did."
(PS, the flip dialect pronunciation of New Orleans, thrown in early while Luke is getting acquainted, should have been thrown out again subsequently.)
p. 214: Luke sends his girlfriend in NYC to get a key from the super and find a photo of Charles in his apartment.
Where to begin: the professional photographer with digital cameras, in the age of flash-drives, only took one photo to NO to find his dad, and that was a print; post 9/11 (or any other time), is any building superintendent going to pass out keys to a girl just on her say-so?
(PS, he display incredible selfishness in his relationship with Jordan, his long-term girlfriend, admitting to us he doesn't love her, but never cutting her loose so she can find someone else - men who did that used to be called cads.)
p. 231: the mystery deepens when they find all of Charles's things carefully packed in an attic - supposedly done on the night the hurricane hit when he was running around saving other people.
No bum on the road for that many years still has all that stuff. Also, he sent his sax to Luke earlier - his loving son never bothers to open his packages anymore - and Luke doesn't recognize it - dang it, saxophone cases are BIG! And why in the world would Charlie send the instrument he is USING in New Orleans to the son who never played that instrument?
p. 243: Luke begins the book referring to a photo from New Orleans that won him the Pulitzer Prize - now we find out who the people in it are - and the scam is revealed - Luke presumably forgives Jez and the others, and the photo is meant to symbolize his "recovery" of his father, but he never actually recovers anything but his own feelings of "I miss my dad", rather than a real appreciation of what his father experienced.
p. 251: Jez et al. claim that the scam was Charlie's last wish - but although he might have expressed a desire for Luke to finally understand him, there is no record that he actually articulated such a convoluted, improbable method of obtaining that end. Or when he would have done so, since he disappeared and none of his friends saw him die.
Weak, weak, weak. ( )

Hurricane Katrina. An estranged father-son relationship. Faith. Love. These are the things that Jason has put in these compelling, moving pages of Recovering Charles.

When I started reading this book, I thought it only sounded interesting and, of course, after reading Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters, I knew Jason had a talent for writing that is truly amazing, so I wanted to read Recovering Charles, too. By the time that I came to the last page, I knew this story was so much more than just interesting.

This story is of a young man who has everything: a good career, great friendships, a girlfriend and a great future. But then the phone call comes...his estranged father is missing in the post-Katrina aftermath. He's torn between ignoring the call or heading to New Orleans to help find his father and learn more about who he is and the man his father's become.

As he's searching for his father, he's also searching for himself, and finding truths about himself that he's not sure he's ready to accept. He's struggling with these things he's finding out, and learning what regret and true love really means. Will Luke find his father alive and get the chance to finally talk to him, or will he, after all he's learned and struggled with, regret things never said to family?

Find out the answer in Recovering Charles and you just might find your second verse in life, too. This book deserves highest awards as well as praises for a story sure to have you thinking about second verses, chances and true love!!! Well done, Jason!!!! ( )

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. Watching Luke's non-relationship with his father change as he begins to see him through the strangers who had become his father's family in New Orleans was interesting. Luke's search for his father after Hurricane Katrina, his reluctance to go at first, his destiny once he gets there, the emotional tug-of-war that can only come from estranged loved ones who have left our immediate realms but somehow come back in the end - a really fine story comes out of all of this. A little romance, the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans, and just a tiny bit of reference to the world of jazz - good book. ( )

Jason F. Wright is a New York Times Bestselling Author of The Christmas Jars and The Wednesday Letters, both of which I have not read, but would like to after reading Recovering Charles. This story is about a man, Luke, who is a professional photographer living in Manhattan and in a relationship with his best female friend, Jordan (a saint of a woman, if you ask me!). The reader discovers that Luke lost his mother as a young man to her tragic overdose to sleeping medications as a result of depression. His father, Charles, never quite recovered from the death of his beloved and inevitably becomes an alcoholic.

Despite his childhood tragedies, Luke moves on to become a successful young man, avoiding alcohol and his father’s phone calls for more money to keep him “afloat.” In my opinion, Luke’s heart has grown hard to his past and his father. Luke gets that dreaded call, after Hurricane Katrina, from a friend of his father’s that Charles has, in fact, gone missing. As it had been more than 2 years since Luke’s last phone call with his father, he wasn’t convinced that Charles was in fact missing. Luke’s intuition told him that maybe Charles had moved along to another town, like he had done in the past. But, after speaking with his esteemed mentor and Jordon, he decides that it is worth the road trip to New Orleans to see if he can locate his father.

In New Orleans, Luke meets the people in his father’s life that seemed to know Charles the best during his period of recovery from alcoholism. These people knew Charles during his second chance at life and his renewed spirit of helping those around him. They aid in Luke’s search for Charles and accompany the reader through the trip through a devastated New Orleans after the levees broke. What is remarkable to me about this book is that I read it so very quickly. It is a well written book, whose characters I got a strong sense of and a terrific visual of. The book is well written, poignant, and yet not overwhelming to the senses. The reader can walk with Luke through this journey and pull for him to write the second verse to Charles’ song, which will be the beginning of Luke’s life.



The Song:

love-me-if-you-can1

“Love Me if You Can”
Music and lyrics by Cherie Call

Tonight I tried to write the perfect song of love
But all the words I sang were blue
Because I’ve tried and I’ve tried to win you over
And I’ve done the best I can do
So we may never be together
But my heart is in your hands
And if you ever think about me in your long-lost dreams
Love me if you can

I know that you’ve moved on, it’s what you had to do
I never had the chance to say good-bye
It’s on my list of all the things I never said
It goes on for pages and it keeps me up at night
And my heart is missing pieces
That only you could understand

So if you ever think about it in your long-lost dreams
Love me if you can
So this song I sing is a little sad
And it’s unrehearsed
I just hope you hear that this broken life
Has had a second verse

‘Cause in those days gone by, I tried to build you castles
And maybe they just turned to sand
But if you can only love who you wished I could have been
I wish you knew it’s finally who I am
I remember how you needed me
And I know yesterday will never come again
But if you feel me reaching for you in your long- lost dreams
Love me if you can

BookClub Discussion Questions:

My Favorite Recovering Charles Book Club Discussion Questions

3. Charlie was sure that Luke would have a “love at first sight” experience just as he had with his wife. Discuss Luke’s relationship with Jordan and with Bela. How are they different? How are they the same? Do you agree with Charlie that “love at first sight” is possible? I do believe that love at first sight is both possible and probable. There is an inexplicable connection with the person that your soul is meant to be with. Luke had that with Bela, but more of a comfortable, logical relationship with Jordan.

8. Charlie called them premonitions; Luke called them dreams. Is there a difference between them? How did Charlie’s premonitions influence his behavior and beliefs? Do you feel they dictated his actions in any way? For some, I would say “yes, there is a difference.” For others, they are one in the same. Most of my dreams are premonitions and you can feel the difference between them and the simple “stress” dreams that your subconscious lets out for the sake of your sanity in your sleep. Charlie was in-tune with his spirit and his dreams, he knew the importance of them.

10. Why is it so important to say good-bye? I’m not sure that it is. Sometimes goodbyes are harder than living with what is. This is a question that will take more thinking on my part… but, one for all of us to consider.

On Sher’s “Out of Ten” Scale:

This book, well it’s lovely. I would most definitely recommend it. Jason F. Wright has a fantastic blog, which readers can access via the book website. It’s soft and easy like a song… yet makes you think, remember and long for that heart inside where you are true to yourself. If I were to place it in the American Fiction Genre, I’d give it, within that genre, an 8 out of 10. Thank you, Penny of Author Marketing Experts for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. ( )

"Recovering Charles," Jason Wright’s fourth novel, is about second chances, those who need those chances, and those asked to provide them. It is a reminder that the second verse of a person’s life does not have to be a repeat of the first and that the second verses of our lives, in fact, might just turn out to be the ones for which we will be remembered.

Luke Millward, a young New York photographer, has seemingly overcome his mother’s suicide and his father’s inability to recover from her loss. He is doing well in a career of which he is proud and he has a girlfriend who loves and admires him. Over the years, though, he received numerous phone calls from his alcoholic father asking for loans and, despite knowing that he would never see the money again, Luke always sent what he could, no strings attached – until the last time.

That last conversation, during which Luke told Charles, his father, that he was fed up with their relationship and never wanted to hear from him again, is the one that will come to haunt him because Charles took him at his word and has not called in over two years.

And then it happens – a stranger’s phone call changes Luke’s life forever.

As a photographer, Luke is intrigued by the television coverage of Hurricane Katrina, drawn to the images coming out of New Orleans, in particular, finding that he cannot shut down his “photographer’s inner lens.” But the last thing Luke expects is to receive a stranger’s phone call asking him to come to the city to help in the search for his father who has not been seen since the day before the storm. Reluctantly, so reluctantly that it seems to take him forever to actually reach New Orleans, Luke agrees to help find Charles, be he dead or alive.

What he finds in New Orleans is not what he expects. Nothing, of course, could have prepared him for the devastation and chaos that is post-Katrina New Orleans. The utter destruction, the smells, the dead bodies still waiting to be carried away, and the militarization of the city are almost overwhelming to him. But he finds something else: a little community of self-sustaining friends, including his father’s fiancé, into which he is welcomed with open arms, a group of people that loves his father dearly, something that Luke, who remembers his father primarily as the out-of-control alcoholic he last spoke to, can hardly believe.

Luke hardly recognizes the Charles described to him by his new friends: a man well on his way to making a success of his life’s second verse, a man loved and respected by everyone who knows him and is missed by all of them. As his new friends help him search for his father, Luke gradually comes to see Charles through their eyes and begins to hope that he will be given a chance to put things right with his father.

"Recovering Charles" is a reminder to families everywhere that lives do have second verses and that the things said in anger, and those words left unsaid in the aftermath of anger, do not necessarily have to lead to a lifetime of regrets. People can, and do, change, and oftentimes life’s second verse is the sweeter of the two. This is another inspirational Christmas season offering from Jason Wright, one with the potential to change lives for the better.

Rated at: 4.0 ( )