The Way the Family Got Away

Michael Kimball

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780007292073
• eBook ISBN:
  9780007394913
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A remarkable first novel about a journey across America and the effects of grief and loss on a family that is trying to stay together when everything is falling apart.

This is the way the family got away. They pack all the things they can fit into the car and place the body of their dead brother in the toy box and put him in the boot. They leave Mineola, Texas and head across the terrifying, vacant landscape of Mid-America. In every place they visit, they sell off what they can to make it to the next town. They keep going to keep the family together.

Michael Kimball's remarkable The Way The Family Got Away is the story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family's surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister. They try to make sense of death; why they must leave home and how they get from one place to the next. It is an extraordinary study of the effects of grief upon language and the ways that loss makes itself felt through a child's imagination.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• The Whole Way We Got There
• Living Anymore in Mineola
• My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother
• Our House in Mineola
• The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It
• Mineola to Birthrock
• Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again
• Birthrock to Stringtown
• Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them
• Stringtown to Albion
• My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away
• Albion to Hot Springs
• How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break
• Hot Springs to North Little Rock
• House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break
• North Little Rock to Campbell Station
• How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up
• Campbell Station to Biggerton
• How to Make a Doll-Baby Out of String, Baby Clothes, Shoe Parts, Buttons, Stones, Balloons, a Hat, Glue, Crayons, a Needle and Thread, and Two People Too
• Biggerton to Glenallen
• How to Make a Baby Up, How to Make Me Up into a Momma, and How Many People Any People-Family Needs to Have Living Inside It
• Glenallen to Anna
• Looking, Looking-Pictures, the People Inside Momma, the Shape of the Baby, and Looking Inside Momma’s Stomach and Hole
• Anna to Henderson
• One of the Holes that Goes Down into the Ground and Dirt-World and Away to My Little Brother, the Other Momma and Poppa that Climbed Us Up and Up Out of the Hole, and How Our Momma and Poppa Kept Us Inside Our Family
• Henderson to Hendricksville
• My Little Brother and His Breath Inside the Toy Box, How We Played with the Doll and People of My Little Brother, and How Alive You Have to Be to Go Away
• Hendricksvllle to Bennetts Switch
• How Nobody Should Ever Wear Sun-Dresses Up to Too Hot, How Everybody Tried to Burn Me Up Inside One, and How You Make a Sun-Dress Out of the Sun Anyway
• Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown
• The Doll-Family Inside the Toy Box and How Anything Bad You Say to Them Goes Away from You to Them So You Can Go Away to Somewhere Else Better Than Where Everybody Else Is Dead
• Frederick Perrytown to Edwardsburg
• How Momma Played Dead, the Shirt-Baby Poppa Carried, the Angels Inside the Clouded-House on Top of the Hot-Hill, and How Everybody Else Was Waiting for Us in Heaven
• Edwardsburg to Sunfield
• The House with Counting-Doors, the Man that Knew How Many People Were Alive, BoxRooms, More Holes, the Lady with the Rolling Trash Cans, and Why Everybody Has to Get Up and Live
• Sunfield to Far Town
• The People-Family that Had a Living-Baby Living with Them and the Way We Got Away with a New Baby of My Little Brother
• Far Town to Morrison
• How the New Baby of My Little Brother Started to Die Too and How We Gave Him Away to the Baby-Angel at the Hot-Hill
• Morrison to Gaylord
• How We Burned My Little Brother Up, How We Turned My Little Brother into See-Through Dirt, and How We Buried My Little Brother Inside a See-Through Jar and Farther Down into the Ground and Dirt-World
• Bompa’s House in Gaylord
• Why We Were Dead and Where Dead People and My Little Brother Go Away to Inside You
• About the Author
• About the Publisher