Wilma, the foster mom in Betty Jane Hegerat’s first novel Running Toward Home, has a bad feeling about this day, the day of her 12-year-old foster son Corey’s biannual visit with his mom Tina at the Calgary zoo. Especially when she notices he has a fever. But he wants to go and it’s too late to cancel. She consoles herself with the fact that it’s only a day and overnight stay until the social worker delivers Corey back to her and her husband Ben.
Tina has her own problems. One main problem, really. Simon, her jealous, drinks-too-much boyfriend, who she thought was still safely in the clink, has chosen this exact time to resurface. That’s bad news because as social worker Kristel has made crystal clear, if Simon is found anywhere around Corey, her access to him will be cut.
Corey, the kid in the middle, has been thinking about this visit for a while now: “Every six months right before his visit with his mom, Corey was afraid that he wouldn’t know her. That she’d dye her hair blonde, cut it short, and start to dress like a woman instead of a girl.”
That’s the opening of this less than 24-hour tale of tug-of-war between foster parents, birth parent, grandparent and government for one loveable and vulnerable 12-year-old kid. Right from the opening chapter Hegerat pulls us into this story with exterior specifics and interior revelations so that in spite of the short time span of the tale, we read about far more. We discover the back story of Ben and Wilma and why they are foster parents. We see Tina’s dysfunctional past and complicated present. We come to understand Corey’s grandfather, Opi’s, part and non-part in Corey’s life. And we find out what it feels like to be a really fine 12-year-old kid who is also a liar and a runaway.
Characters play a major part in Running Toward Home. Hegerat reveals each to us in puzzle fashion within the 55 short (one to five page) chapters of the book. Each chapter presents more pieces of that puzzle from the viewpoint of one of the five main characters (Corey, Wilma, Tina, Ben, Opi). In this Hegerat shows herself a master at getting inside the heads of a variety of players. Corey, a mixture of guardedness, yearning, vulnerability and cynicism is a believable shunted-around 12-year-old boy. Wilma and Ben, who at first come off as having it together, reveal their own insecurities as the story unfolds. Opi is very much the authentic European immigrant with his Dutch sayings, his out-of-sync old world sensibilities, and stubbornness. Tina is colorfully portrayed, both by the language used in her chapters and the specific detail with which her chaotic life is described:
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