Leave Out The Tragic Part by Dave Kindred

Leave Out The Tragic Parts: A Grandfather's Search For A Boy Lost To Addiction by Dave Kindred

Published February 2021 by PublicAffairs

Source: originally received, via Netgalley, from the publisher then checked out from the library

Publisher's Summary:

Jared Kindred left his home and family at the age of eighteen, choosing to wander across America on freight train cars and live on the street. Addicted to alcohol most of his short life, and withholding the truth from many who loved him, he never found a way to survive. 

Through this ordeal, Dave Kindred's love for his grandson has never wavered. 

Leave Out the Tragic Parts is not merely a reflection on love and addiction and loss. It is a hard-won work of reportage, meticulously reconstructing the life Jared chose for himself—a life that rejected the comforts of civilization in favor of a chance to roam free. 

Kindred asks painful but important questions about the lies we tell to get along, and what binds families together or allows them to fracture. Jared's story ended in tragedy, but the act of telling it is an act of healing and redemption. This is an important book on how to love your family, from a great writer who has lived its lessons.

My Thoughts:

You might think that a person who's dealt with addiction in her family would shy away from books about addiction. But there is a comfort in knowing that you're not alone and that you aren't alone in not having known the "right" thing to do to save your loved one. Perhaps even, selfishly, there is a comfort in knowing that your loved one is one of the lucky ones. 

Even if you can't relate to what Dave Kindred and his family went through, this is a book well worth reading. Kindred, a highly respected sportswriter, knows how to tell a story. For Jared's story, it may be even more important that Kindred knows how to research a story. Putting together the story of the life of a "traveling kid" isn't easy; they criss-cross the country, hopping freight trains, traveling with a changing cast of characters, and drinking and using drugs heavily. Jared never entirely lost contact with his family, calling periodically and sometimes paying visits where he brought along some of his companions, which made tracking his life from the time he left home easier to do but not easier to understand. Understanding would never entirely come for Kindred, as it doesn't for most families of addicts. There are no easy answers to addiction, nor to the need of some to be entirely free of the bonds of traditional lifestyles. 

This is not, as you can well imagine, an easy read. One reviewer said that it does, mostly, leave out the tragic parts. I don't know that I'd agree with that and I don't know that a book needs to be grittier to make readers understand how hard the life of an addict can be for the addict and those who love them.Included are pieces written by some of Jared "Goblin's" friends that tell the story better than anyone else could. Kindred writes with honesty (Kindred is quick to admit his own shortcomings) but also with deep love and a respect for the reasons that the travelers choose to live the way they do.