Our Drink and BOok pairings for The Road to Tender Hearts
Family looks different for everyone. For some, it’s a group of found friends, for others its the siblings you grew up with and the parents who raised you. Sometimes, however, family looks like a sixty-three year old man with a million-dollars traveling across the country with his daughter, some orphans, and a cat. Sometimes family is just a collection of people stuck in the same car, on the same road trip of life.
The Road to Tender Hearts
by Annie Hartnett
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush--bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death--by the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals
"A miraculous novel--an actual and spiritual road trip you won't forget."--John Irving
At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren't for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn't have much time left--he's had three heart attacks already.
But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he's going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.
To Drink
Drinking while driving is not okay, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a great drink while on a road trip. The easiest BYOB for a night chilling in a hotel room after a long days drive is a beer or wine - easy to pack. But if you want to put your personal touch on your beverage, try making your own hard seltzer.
Hard Seltzer from Simple Goodness Sisters
Best made fresh, so make sure to pack all the ingredients - except, maybe, the ice
Makes 1
Glass: any, about 12 ounces
Ingredients:
- 1 ounce vodka (you can also use a flavored vodka) or, for a ranch water style drink, use silver tequila
- 1/4-1/2 ounce simple syrup in any flavor (Check out Simple Goodness Sisters' amazing syrups!)
- 8 ounces seltzer water
- 1 cup of ice
Pre-chill your seltzer and syrup in the fridge. Measure and combine all ingredients, gently stir just to combine so you don't flatten bubbles. A sugar or spice rim is optional, but looks great on the glass seltzer bottles.
For non-alcoholic version, simply leave out the alcohol and follow the same directions.
Optional: If you don’t want to worry about a glass, consider grabbing a brand of seltzer that comes in a glass bottle. Simply take a few sips to make room before adding the ingredients.
(source: https://simplegoodnesssisters.com/blogs/recipes/simple-goodness-hard-seltzer)
To Cook
Most road trips are filled with meals at diners, fast food places, and little restaurants across the country. Cooking isn’t really an option, unless you bring your kitchen along for the ride. So, instead of worrying about food prepping on the road, road trip prep by checking out a few recipes from places along the way.
Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Road Trip, by B Dylan Hollis
Join B. Dylan Hollis, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Baking Yesteryear, on a cross-country culinary journey with 100 uniquely American recipes.
From the deserts of the Southwest to the shining Atlantic Coast, the USA is as sweet as it gets. In this tour de food, B. Dylan Hollis takes you on a delicious road trip to taste everything from the coffee-crazed creations of the Pacific Northwest to the larger-than-life sheet cakes of Texas.
You'll be hitting the pavement in vintage style as you journey with Dylan through the culture capitals of America to savor the very best bakes the nation has to offer. His retro recipes span the decades from the 1900s to the 2000s and feature famous (and forgotten) desserts from every state.
With his signature wry humor, Dylan explores the US and uncovers the history of nostalgic local favorites, including Boston Cream Pie on the cobbled streets of Beantown, Beignets in the sultry heat of jazzy New Orleans, and Date Cream scooped up poolside in Palm Springs.
Baking Across America is the highly anticipated successor to Baking Yesteryear and delivers 100 wild, wacky, and wonderful recipes from every star-spangled corner of the good ol' US of A.
Why do we road trip, anyway?
From crazy road-side attractions to driving route 66, road trips are a very American kind of “vacation.” But road trips today look very different than they did when our parents were kids. How and why has this unique form of travel - full of greasy food, hours locked in a car with your family, and dread of whether or not you’ll make it to the next rest stop bathroom - changed over the years? Why is it still a cherished tradition?
Don’t Make Me Pull Over!: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip, by Richard Ratay
The birth of America's first interstate highways in the 1950s hit the gas pedal on the road trip phenomenon and families were soon streaming--sans seatbelts!--to a range of sometimes stirring, sometimes wacky locations. In the days before cheap air travel, families didn't so much take vacations as survive them. Between home and destination lay thousands of miles and dozens of annoyances, and with his family Richard Ratay experienced all of them--from being crowded into the backseat with noogie-happy older brothers, to picking out a souvenir only to find that a better one might have been had at the next attraction, to dealing with a dad who didn't believe in bathroom breaks.
Now, decades later, Ratay offers "an amiable guide...fun and informative" (New York Newsday) that "goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer's day" (The Wall Street Journal). In hundreds of amusing ways, he reminds us of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including twenty-foot "land yachts," oasis-like Holiday Inn "Holidomes," "Smokey"-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson's ice cream, and the thrill of finding a "good buddy" on the CB radio.
An "informative, often hilarious family narrative [that] perfectly captures the love-hate relationship many have with road trips" (Publishers Weekly), Don't Make Me Pull Over! reveals how the family road trip came to be, how its evolution mirrored the country's, and why those magical journeys that once brought families together--for better and worse--have largely disappeared.
If you like The Road to Tender Hearts, then you’ll enjoy:
Take a road trip across the country as four once inseparable siblings reconnect after years apart. Each is at a crossroads in their life and one weekend together sharing secrets, memories of the past, and fears of the future might be exactly what each person needs to find the right path forward.
Fun for the Whole Family, by Jennifer E Smith
The four Endicott siblings--Gemma, Connor, Roddy, and Jude--were once inseparable, a bond created by the absence of their dazzling, mercurial mother, who would return for a few weeks each summer to whisk them off on sprawling road trips around the country.
Decades later, the unthinkable has happened: the Endicotts haven't spoken in years . . . until an out-of-the-blue text arrives from Jude, now a famous actress, summoning them to a small town in North Dakota. They're each at a crossroads: Gemma, who put her own ambitions aside to raise the others, now isn't sure if she wants to be a mother herself; Connor, a celebrated novelist, is floundering after his recent divorce and suffering from an epic case of writer's block; and Roddy, at the tail end of a professional soccer career, is dangerously close to losing his future husband for the chance at one last season.
Jude is the only Endicott who seems to have it all together--but appearances can be deceiving. As the weekend unfolds, and the siblings wrestle with their shared past and uncertain futures, they'll discover that Jude has been keeping three secrets . . . each of which could change everything.
A captivating journey and an ode to forgiveness that takes readers across all fifty states, Fun for the Whole Family brims with heart and resonates long after the final page.
The Correspondent by Virgina Evans
While Sybil, an elderly woman, doesn’t revisit her past with a cross country road trip like PJ, she examines a dark time in her life and finds a way to move forward. Through writing daily letters, Sybil’s small world begins to expand, one word at a time.
Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters--to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has--a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.
Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime. Sybil Van Antwerp's life of letters might be "a very small thing," but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.