Watch for falling horses. (100 Sideways Miles)

 Smith, A. (2014) 100 Sideways Miles. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster

Finn often feels like he’s trapped in his father’s book.  His father, a famous author, used aspects of him for inspiration in his best-selling book.  Finn was in a terrible accident when he was a young child in which a horse fell seemingly fell from the sky.  It killed his mother and left him with a broken back and epilepsy.  He was left with a scar shaped like :l: on his back from the procedure that fixed his back.  Add his heterochromatic eyes and name and you’ll get the features of the alien invaders of his father’s novel. 

Finn is constantly trying to space himself from it.  Distance is what really matters to Finn.  Considering how fast the Earth is hurtling through the solar system, and we along with it, it seems to make more sense to measure time in distance.  Every second 20 miles, 5 seconds a hundred sideways miles.

His best friend is Cade Hernandez.  Cade is all at once every teacher’s nightmare and many girl’s dream.  Finn gave him the nickname Win-Win after Monica Fassbinder, a German exchange student, starting giving Cade sexual favors at school and paying him for it.  Cade may have also caused their history teacher to get an aneurysm.  He also somehow got the entire Junior class to answer all of their state assessments in the pattern of C-A-D-E.  He’s vulgar, chews tobacco, and drinks too much but everyone (teens anyway) love him for it.

Julia Bishop just transferred in from Chicago and it’s Finn’s job to show her around.  He can barely talk he’s so smitten.  It turns out she lives somewhat near him though, which turns out to be kind of handy later.  Finns’ family goes to New York for a short vacation, leaving him home with Cade.  Even though his dad can’t stand Cade, he does trust him to take care of Finn.  When Cade goes off to work though, Finn has a seizure and collapses in his open front doorway.  When he comes to, he’s lying in a puddle of his own urine.  Worse, Julia is standing there looking worried.  Mortified at his situation, he says some rude words to her and takes off upstairs to shower.  When he gets out, he finds Cade has come home. Cade brought pizza for dinner, as well as Monica, and some beer.  Julia apparently cleaned up the pee, which is even more embarrassing for Finn.  They all load up and go to a party and Julia and Finn start to hit it off.

Julia and Finn’s relationship continues to grow as school ends and summer begins.  Monica goes back to Germany, so Cade is a bit grumpier.  They all spend a bit more time together, even going camping.  While camping they explore an abandoned prison, which is super creepy.  Finn has another seizure, this time cutting his head open.  It gets worse when he finds out Julia is going back to Chicago.  She leaves and he is heartbroken.  He doesn’t come out of his room for days.  But he and Cade planned a road trip to Oklahoma to do a college visit, so he has to leave.

During the road trip they get caught in a immense rain storm while traveling in Oklahoma.  After witnessing a van get run off the road, the boys trudge through the waterfall of rain to see if the people are all right.  The minivan is slipping into a swollen river and Finn doesn’t hesitate to jump in.  Fighting the roaring current, he’s able to pull a boy and dog out of the van.  After floating downstream to safety, Finn collapses on the riverbank in another seizure.  He wakes up in a veterinarian’s clinic, naked.  The vet has mistaken him for Cade, being that the truck found belongs to Cade.  Cade is not there though.  Finn rushes out of the vets, takes the truck and heads back to the river.  Cade is ok.  A similar situation happened to him when he pulled an old man out of the van.  They take off.

They don’t go to the college though, they head to Chicago.  Finn has finally figured out that he isn’t the character in his father’s book and he can do whatever he wants.  And he’s going to share this news with Julia

Though I was pretty repulsed by the main characters initially, mostly Cade, they began to grow on me a bit.  Though Cade is really obnoxious, he’s pretty much an example of many a teenager out there.  It was interesting way to tell a story.  Often the timeline wasn’t exactly linear, and I had to figure what was going on.  Finn’s view of the world was interesting, if not a bit depressing. His view being connected to the fact that everything was just molecules being recycled, comparable to the work of a knackery.  I also like the hint of supernatural, when he sees the ghosts during his seizures.

I read this book because I am required to read a book written by Andrew Smith.