Gather

August 28, 2023
Ever since 10th grader Ian Gray and his mother were abandoned by Ian’s father, things at home in rural Vermont have been difficult for the family. After Ian’s mother hurts her back at work, she loses her job and becomes dependent on prescription opioids to cope with the pain. When she’s hospitalized, Ian is forced to rely on his own skills to care for their home. He quits the basketball team to look for a job, makes repairs around the house, and struggles to ready their dilapidated car for inspection. Luckily, his knack for fixing things lands him an opportunity to make money working for kind neighbors. He even pseudo-adopts Gather, the enormous stray dog that has been wandering into his family’s yard, and befriends new student Sylvia. Upon his mother’s return, she finds employment at a local diner. Ian is sure that good things are on the horizon for them, until the government threatens to repossess their land for nonpayment of taxes. Ian’s genuine first-person narration—enriched by his penchant for pithy metaphors and similes—unveils a protagonist whose innate sense of justice and tentatively hopeful perspective buoy Cadow’s sober debut. Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up.

September 1, 2023
Family matters; friends, both two- and four-legged, help too. The story opens with Ian Gray's Aunt Terry bustling around the house in anticipation of his mom's return home from the hospital, just a week before Thanksgiving. In bits and pieces, readers learn that Mom struggles with addiction. Through this and all the subsequent challenges Ian faces, a stray dog who has wandered out of the woods adjoining his backyard becomes his anchor and steady best friend. He names the large, galumphing stray Gather. Ian recollects spending a lot of time with crusty Gramps, who liked to hunt. Mom makes a slow recovery, landing a job and a boyfriend. Between school, family, and friends, Ian's world is heavily populated. Cadow's debut novel portrays a challenging coming-of-age in rural Vermont with warmth, humor, and insight. Ian observes the turmoil that surrounds him with bewilderment and deadpan humor. At one point, after a potentially dangerous incident, he remarks, "Obviously I made it since I'm telling you about it." Cadow captures Ian's engaging na�vet�, which is tempered by a survivor's unflappability and a blossoming sense of irony. The novel has the flavor of a collection of linked stories, boosted by snappy chapter titles: "What You Come Across and What You Do with It" is a reminiscence about a fishing trip and a found jackknife but also reflects Ian's philosophy of life. Main characters read white. A heartfelt novel about the challenges of youth and the value of community. (Fiction. 13-18)

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 22, 2023

Gr 7-10-Gather is a stray dog who may have a little Airedale in him; the running joke in Cadow's debut is that everyone encountering Gather has a new guess about his mixed breed. Ian, or Dorian Gray Henry, is a white, rural Vermont teenager who has a level of self-awareness that draws readers in from the start. "She's tired, but she's not high," is what Ian notices right off about his mother, just home from the hospital. He sees through Aunt Terry's story, that his mom has finally "had some work done on that bad back of hers." Although Ian's mother attempts to stay clean, the struggle is vicious, and the narrative works to keep readers off-balance and keening for information, just as anyone who has ever lived with an addict has to. There are no straight stories with that disease, but the one here is full of sensory images and descriptive notes about this corner of rural New England-the "little copse of junipers" and "the cold November rain"-that anchor readers as they untangle exactly what a large bounding dog has to do with a frail, opioid-scarred mother. The novel covers food insecurity, poverty, and making do with little, but also grudging love of scattershot family, and Ian's wry but upbeat fix-it attitude rolls with really hard punches. He is wise beyond his years, but he has had to be; his slow-motion long-way-around conversational style demands patience of readers, especially in the early chapters. Book talk it and tell teenagers to hang on. It's a great ride. VERDICT The ground constantly shifts in this extraordinary keyhole view of addiction and its ongoing aftermath; Cadow takes his time, but delivers a realistic and compelling novel.-Kimberly Olson Fakih

Copyright 2023 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2023
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* The dog, obviously a stray and big as a house, appears out of the blue. Sixteen-year-old Ian knows immediately that he wants to adopt him, although his mother says no, they can't afford it. True, for Ian's father has deserted them, while his mother has been fired from her job as she fights an opioid addiction. Ian won't take that no for an answer, though, and winds up keeping the dog, whom he names Gather. Ian is a country kid living on the last 10 acres of what was once his family's 300-acre Vermont farm. He is preternaturally resourceful and can do anything with his hands, having learned these skills from his beloved Gramps. His life is not atypical--he's a sophomore in high school, where he's sometimes in trouble, and has a girlfriend named Sylvia--until he's confronted with a tragedy that tests his resources and his love for Gather. Cadow's first novel is, in a word, superb. The wonderfully empathic characters are fully realized, their reality enhanced by numerous flashbacks that provide context and dimensionality. The Vermont setting is deeply evocative, as is Ian's memorable voice, through which the captivating story is told. Arguably one of the finest novels of the year.

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July 1, 2023
Cadow immerses the reader in the life of narrator Ian in a leisurely paced story that intentionally zigzags and doubles back on itself, echoing a walk in the woods -- appropriately, since the setting is a closely observed rural Vermont. High schooler Ian faces a host of challenges, including poverty, a mom struggling with substance abuse, an absent father, and the loss of his mentor grandfather. A stray dog he names Gather and the strong connections he gradually forges in his community and at school help Ian find his place in the world. A heartfelt coming-of-age novel.

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)