The Left Turn

The left turn: Becky Geist

Can you live in the present and be physically also in the past? Can your world intertwine as you try and recreate the times in your life that caused you anger, stress, heartache, and despair? Hannah and James began an ordinary day filled with sunshine and hope, yet both were filled with memories that haunted them from their pasts and embraced them in another world where they find themselves. Hannah is plagued by her anxiety, and neurosis as James feels unsettled and angry, and yet they want to fill their day by having a bike ride that sets both on different journeys of hope, self-realization, understanding their limitations, and finding out who they are. It

While bike riding near Golden Gate Bridge after moving to San Francisco, something happens, and both get taken or transported into an alternative life or parallel universe.

James encountered many people, but one little girl named Emmie made a small difference for a short time as he tried to befriend her, pet her did name

Dog and then a memory about his brother Cal brought back an argument and his past as Emmie runs away from him, he meets two other people, and one helps bandage his hand as another memory or collage forms making you wonder real or imaginary.

But his anger wins and gets on his bike but where will he wind up?

Hannah is now staying with an older lady named Maudie who centers on her, as she describes their meeting, conversation, and the fact that Maudie has a copy of her cookbook and knows who she is. Things puzzle Hannah even where she really lives and then a chance encounter and a journal with a prologue: I turned left. A conversation with her publisher and the conversation turns in an odd direction as she mentions someone named Bob! This sends Hannah speeding off in her bike to find out about the address she was told and then a harsh truth comes out.

Throughout the novel, you hear two primary voices and a third. Hannah seems unsure of herself, and wonders if she had it has a daughter and is often overwrought about her present and not sure about her next turn. Janes is tense and explode using his bike to pedal harder to release his anger, yet most interactions lead to confrontation or his temper flaring up. A chance meeting with his friend Phil opens a discussion about synchronicity an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar events that are causally related. It is recognizing that things are happening in purposeful, intentional, connected ways. Things just happen like going back to a restaurant and the waiter returning his phone. The author through James elaborates on his feelings and guilt about his brother Cal. Then he meets Sammo, but Hannah’s thoughts are next as she meets a customer on her paper route, and she expresses that she can’t remember how she came to SSN Francisco and has lost chunks of her life. She and Jaz seem to mesh back to James who along with Sammo is packing up his life and recalling his past, Cal, his mom, and losing his family but when we read it we wonder what is real and what did he experience. Hannah connects with Allie who we thought was lost to her and yet she relates information about James that contradicts the beginning of the novel and her thoughts about her life.

Flashbacks to different encounters and you wonder which James is which as one is looking for a consultant as he’s an HR job recruiter caught in a somber and gridlocked grief over his brother’s death and then we hear him say the name of the person he might choose James Connerton and then a phone call that would change it all and his connection to this James.

The two worlds blend into one and Hannah and Jim meet when she goes for an interview and some reason, it just might click. Is this her James? The author takes both Hannah and James on a new journey that connects their pasts and fast-forwards in the present as they talk about leaving the past behind and moving ahead. The airplane ride helped engage her in writing and an ending that you won’t expect as a man on a bike ride past and a woman turned left pedaling harder than necessary and their eyes locked: is it starting over again is it a whole different world?

A story with different endings in each chapter time by each character and sometimes a narrator as the author takes us on many journeys with Hannah and James as you never know what might happen if you take The Left Turn. Sometimes you are weak, hesitant, needy, and unsure and then life brings you to a different plane and you gain strength, wisdom, confidence, and love. With the love of Maudie and Jaz and the talks with Phil and Sammo both James and Hannah came to their own realizations of what life is now but what about the other universe?

Fran Lewis just reviews