Chasing Windmills
Catherine Ryan Hyde, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307472434
Summary
Letting go becomes the purest expression of love in this extraordinary novel by the bestselling author of Pay It Forward, Catherine Ryan Hyde.
Both Sebastian and Maria live in a world ruled by fear. Sebastian, a lonely seventeen-year-old, is suffocating under his dominant father’s control. In the ten years since his mother passed away, his father has kept him “safe” by barely allowing him out of their apartment. Sebastian’s secret late-night subway rides are rare acts of rebellion. another is a concealed friendship with his neighbor Delilah, who encourages him to question his father’s version of reality. Soon it becomes unclear whether even his mother’s death was a lie.
Maria, a young mother of two, is trying to keep peace at home despite her boyfriend’s abuse. When she loses her job, she avoids telling him by riding the subways during her usual late-night shift. She knows her sister, Stella, is right: She needs to “live in the truth” and let the chips fall where they may. But she still hasn’t been able to bringherself to do it. And soon he will expect her paycheck to arrive.
When Sebastian and Maria wind up on the same train, their eyes meet across the subway car, and these two strangers find a connection that neither can explain or ignore. Together they dream of a new future, agreeing to run away and find Sebastian’s grandmother in the Mojave Desert. But Maria doesn’t know Sebastian is only seventeen. And Sebastian doesn’t know Maria has children until the moment they leave. Ultimately, Maria brings one child, her daughter. Can she really leave her little boy behind? And, if not, what will it cost her to face her furious jilted abuser?
In this tremendously moving novel, Catherine Ryan Hyde shows us how two people trapped by life’s circumstances can break free and find a place in the world where love is genuine and selfless. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1955
• Where—Buffalo, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Currently—lives in Cambria, California
Catherine Ryan Hyde is an American novelist and short story writer, with more recent forays and notable success in transitioning from traditional publication towards the world of eBook publication. Her novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the U.S. and U.K., and her short stories have won many awards and honors. Her book Pay It Forward was adapted into a top-of-the-charts movie, starring Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt.
Ryan-Hyde's literary works are generally optimistic explorations of ordinary people, characters who are troubled or down-on-their-luck or recovering from past difficulties or abuse. Many feature journeys that parallel some of Catherine's own travels, life in New York City, small towns, and 'cross country' travels and explore settings often in those areas and the American West and Southwest. Ryan-Hyde's Young writings and activities deal issues such as alcoholism, (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, TransGender) concerns, social service difficulties, etc. Catherine is also an avid hiker, kayaker, photographer, and is well known for being a very active blogger and interview-accessible author.
Early life
Catherine was born in a family of writers, and lived during her early life in the Buffalo, New York area, and briefly lived in New York City, an influence which has often recurs in her writing in the form of being a setting for part of or the whole story arc. She attributes her changeover from "the last kid picked" on the team towards becoming a writer to a favorite teacher, Lenny Horowitz, who later died of liver cancer.[1] After an accelerated graduation from high school at the age of 17, Catherine worked many jobs such as being a dog trainer, a tour guide at Hearst Castle, and working in a bakery prior to dedicating herself to become a full-time writer in the early 1980s.
After relocating cross country to the Los Angeles area, she currently lives and writes and blogs from her home and areas around Cambria, California.[2]
Early writing career: short stories and novels
Early successes came from writing short stories, at one point racking up more than 122 rejections before being first published,[3] and since then a total of more than 1500 rejections resulting in about 50 published stories.
During this time, Catherine also wrote her first novel(s) Walter's Purple Heart, her first published Novel Funeral for Horses, and an anthology of 18 short stories, Earthquake Weather . A self-described literary writer, her breakthrough novel Pay It Forward (novel) was released in 1999 (Pocket Books) and quickly became a national bestseller, and was later adapted into the film Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers), which was released in 2000.
Pay It Forward
According to published interviews,[4] the genesis of the idea for the novel came when Catherine's car caught fire in what she described as the "bad neighborhood" in which she lived, and two total strangers came to her assistance, then left before she could even thank them.
Since then Pay It Forward, has been translated into twenty languages for publication in more than thirty countries, and was chosen among the Best Books for Young Adults in 2001 by the American Library Association and continues to be among her most popular and requested works. The movie Pay It Forward (Warner Brothers) was released theatrically in 2000, and starred Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment.
Pay It Forward, Young Reader's Edition was released on August 19, 2014. The new version tells the same story but was extensively revised to be more complimentary to lesson plans, summer reading lists, etc. for students at a middle school grade level, that is, for students at approximately the same age and maturity level as the novel's main protagonist, Trevor McKinney.
Other short stories and writings
Her work has appeared in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, Ploughshares,[5] and Glimmer Train. Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She received second place in the 1998 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. Nearly a dozen of her stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The O’Henry Award, and The Pushcart Prize.
Online works
Five Singing Gardeners and One Dead Stranger, nominated for Pushcart Prize
"Hurricane Laura", Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 2000, pp.721-735
One of the more humorous things Ryan Hyde does involves is The Bet which is a yearly for-fun wager on the Kentucky Derby with other authors. Winners get to pick a creative but odd title for 2nd place, 2nd picks third, etc. through however many authors are entered. Some of these stories are published on Catherine and the other authors' blogs etc. This year Catherine chose California Chrome, who won, so she "escaped" having to write a story this year.
Current writing career
Since the success of Pay It Forward (novel), Catherine has gone on to publish a total of more than 24 novels, and many more short stories, including major YA works such as The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance, Becoming Chloe, and an LGBT /YA Novel Jumpstart the World, which garnered several nominations "shortlist" mentions for awards such as the "Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards and as a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2011.
Photography
Catherine has been posting digital versions of wildlife in and around Cambria and on many of her travels for many years, including some of her own "pay it forward" style activities. Featured subjects include wildlife, wildflowers, sunsets, and photographs of interesting cloud formations that she refers to as "done by the Cloud Painter". Many of her best photographs are included in a special "coffee table" book of photographs called 365 Days of Gratitude. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014. ASIN B00JPSS208.
Notable activities
She has served on the 1998 fiction fellowship panel of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and on the editorial staff of the Santa Barbara Review and Central Coast Magazine. She teaches workshops at the Santa Barbara,[6] La Jolla, and Central Coast Writers Conferences.
She is founder and past president of the Pay It Forward Foundation.[7] As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University,[8] met with Americorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.[9]
Catherine has also given many interviews regarding success as a writer on blogs, radio stations, including short videos online about what it takes to succeed in becoming a published author. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
In the simple and captivating latest from Pay It Forward author Hyde, a chance encounter proves life-changing for two lonely New York City subway riders. Four months shy of 18, Sebastian Mundt has been held a virtual prisoner by his father since his mother died: his father home-schools him and doesn't let him have outside relationships. One night, with his father heavily sedated by his sleeping pill, Sebastian sneaks out to ride the subway and locks eyes with Maria Arquette, a young mother who is caught in an abusive marriage. The two share an instant connection and take to meeting on the subway almost nightly and tentatively planning a future in the California desert town that Sebastian remembers from childhood, where thousands of windmills stretch out across the horizon. Hyde gracefully alternates between Sebastian's and Maria's perspectives with gentle nods to this New York love story's precursors (Maria obsessively watches West Side Story). It is their voices—at once utterly credible and heartbreakingly naïve—that make the book, and while this is being billed as an adult novel, its closest stylistic relative is S.E. Hinton's YA classic The Outsiders.
Publishers Weekly
Seventeen-year-old Sebastian Mundt is homeschooled by his father in New York City. He hadn't seen his mother, now dead, since he was seven. When his father goes to sleep, Sebastian rides the subways, just to get out of the house. On one of his nocturnal subterranean journeys, he encounters 22-year-old Maria Arquette, who takes her own late-night rides to escape her abusive boyfriend, Carl, the father of her two children. A fan of the movie West Side Story (she was named for the lead character), Maria wishes her life could be as romantic. She calls Sebastian Tony, the movie's hero, and imagines a scenario where they run away together. Sebastian wants to get away from his domineering father, perhaps to the windmills he recalls from his brief stay as a child with his grandmother in the California desert. It does sound romantic, but how will Sebastian react to Maria's children? And how will she prevent Carl from finding her? Hyde (Love in the Present Tense ) presents two damaged people who are too young to have withstood all they have yet strong enough to take that first step to something, "somewhere" better. Readers will dream right along with them while realizing that real life (even as portrayed in novels) isn't like the movies. Recommended for public library collections. — Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
(Adult/High School) Hyde's coming-of-age novel is a reimagining of the classic tale of star-crossed lovers-intentionally reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, but fresh and new as well. Sebastian, 17, and Maria, 24, meet while riding New York's subway trains until the wee hours of the morning. He's a sheltered homeschooler who sneaks out of the apartment after his controlling father takes his nightly sleeping pill. She's a mother of two who's afraid to tell her abusive husband that she's lost her night-shift job. There's also a fairy godmother-Delilah is a wise old woman who introduces Sebastian to the delights of pizza and DVDs and counsels him on love and the ways of the world. Sebastian and Maria alternate as narrators; short chapters make for a page-turning read and the distinct voices are sweet, soul-baring, and honest. Hyde writes evocatively of the visceral nature of first love. Her characters are well developed, and she describes settings (New York City, a cross-country bus trip, the Mojave Desert) economically but effectively. The ending is realistic and satisfying. Chasing Windmills will appeal to teens who enjoy realistic fiction and a good story about relationships. —Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
School Library Journal
Hyde chronicles two New Yorkers' efforts to escape their different but equally constricting lives in a sweet tale openly modeled on West Side Story. Alternating chapters between the two main characters, the author begins with Sebastian, a naive 17-year-old who chafes under the domination of his strange, obsessive father. Home schooling prevents him from making friends his own age, and he's almost completely isolated until a doctor's orders give him a chance to escape his stifling apartment for a few hours each day to get fresh air and exercise. Sebastian spends most of his free time with his only friend, Delilah, an older black woman who has rented an apartment to be near her new grandchild. Delilah doesn't just provide companionship, she also gives him permission to start living for himself. Aimlessly riding the subway late at night just to get out of the house, Sebastian sees a young woman who, like him, goes to the end of the line and back. The two feel an instantaneous spark and, despite several miscues, finally manage to connect. Her name is Maria, and she's riding the Lexington Avenue line during the hours she'd normally be working to keep her abusive boyfriend Carl, father of her two children, from discovering that she's lost her job. When she and Sebastian find themselves falling in love, they see a chance to escape from their individual traps. She nicknames him "Tony," so they'll be Tony and Maria, just like in West Side Story. While the two plan, motherless Sebastian makes a devastating discovery that sends him to California to see his grandmother. That journey takes both him and Maria to the edge of a life-changing decision. A gentle tale centering on how people come to grip with their pasts.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think it is a coincidence or a pattern that Maria, who had an abusive father, then found a man who abused her?
2. This leads us to consider the next generation: might Natalie's life turn out differently through having known Sebastian?
3. Do you think Maria could have found her way out of her abusive relationship without the support of her sister? Does breaking free from abusive control rely heavily on the support of others, and from having someone mirror back a different reality?
4. Similarly, how differently do you think Sebastian's life would have turned out without the support of Delilah?
5. Do you understand the decisions Sebastian's mother made when he was young? Do you forgive her for her actions?
6. In what ways do the themes of this novel match those of West Side Story? Did the novel's nod to this famous story effect your reading of it, and if so, how?
7. In your experience, is there a fine line between love and possession? Can the two be easily confused? What different kinds of love are illustrated in the novel?
8. How are Sebastian and Maria alike and how are they different? If they had met under happier circumstances, do you think they would still have fallen in love?
9. How important are your childhood memories to you? Is there a single memory you feel defines who you are?
10. How did you feel about the way the novel ended? Was it as you expected? Would you have preferred a different outcome?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)