The Way to Stay in Destiny by Augusta Scattergood

He demands that Theo “makes up the bed tight with that military fold thing.” He also insists that Theo does the laundry and folds the underwear in squares. Uncle Raymond seems permanently marked by his Army service. “ Least there’s somebody left who appreciates what we both fought for.” “The boss is coming in early to show me the ropes,” he says. Uncle Raymond got his new job in Florida thanks to the intervention of an old Army buddy. He seems to me to be straight out of a Dickens novel. Nothing much good can be said about Uncle Raymond. “Nobody but a fool wastes time on music,” he says.Īt this stage of the novel I wondered what could happen to Theo and Uncle Raymond that would be uplifting or redeeming. When Uncle Raymond finds Theo playing it, he slams the keyboard cover on the boy’s hands. The primary source of conflict is the piano. “Things are different now,” he says, pounding his fist into his palm over and over again.

Uncle Raymond used the bus ride from Kentucky to Florida to lay out his rules. He speaks abrupt, non-standard English.As in, “Don’t you know nothing? It ain’t no ocean.” And he tends to holler. When he wants to get Theo’s attention, he punches him in the arm, hard. Uncle Raymond carries everything he owns either in a heavy tool chest or in his old Army duffle bag He has a bum knee and complains it about constantly. His uncle has other ideas, and lays them down as laws. Until Uncle Raymond takes over Theo’s life, the boy had been destined to be a famous musician or perhaps a big leaguer. Now Theo and Uncle Raymond live in a boarding house that doubles as a dance studio in which a large piano tempts Theo who shares the musical skills of the man he was named after. In Kentucky, Theo had been in the same class with the same twelve kids forever. Uncle Raymond moves Theo from Kentucky to Destiny, Florida. His grandparents had raised him until their health failed, and then turned him over to Uncle Raymond, whom Theo “had never laid his eyes on.” Theo’s parents died when he was four years old. He learned this skill during his time in the Army. It’s May 1974, and Theo has fallen into the hands of his mother’s brother, Uncle Raymond, a Vietnam veteran who has been working in Alaska since his war ended as a mechanic. The hero of Scattergood’s latest YA book, The Way to Stay in Destiny (Scholastic, 192 pp., $16.99, hardcover $6.99, paper $10.99, Kindle), is an orphan named Thelonious (Theo) Monk Thomas by his hippie parents. She tells us she has “devoted her life and career to getting books into the hands of young readers.” Her 2012 book Glory Be was a Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee. Augusta Scattergood is a children’s book author and reviewer and a former librarian.

The Way to Stay in Destiny by Augusta Scattergood