"I was a broken thing, I was dimly starting to realize that, and the only thing I really knew how to do was to keep on running."
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Where I'm Bound I Can't Tell by Jeremy Lee Lulu
book review by John E. Roper
Growing up is hard, and Jeremy Lee is doing it badly. A youthful prank of breaking and entering into the local mall just "to have a look around" has earned the 14-year-old a stint of community service at a nursing home where the residents are slowly dying. Armed with a bad attitude and false bravado, Lee encounters an old man at his new workplace who will completely change his world. Teddy has lived a life of adventure and non-conformity and soon captivates his young listener with stories of his wild youth and later years. He has fought his world and the expectations of others with a feverish passion, and paid for his boldness in blood and heartache. Lee is not sure the tales are true, but the lessons learned by the old man begin to color the boy's own viewpoints and to teach him, if slowly, what is truly important in life.
Coming-of age stories are plentiful in modern literature, and Lee's novel is one of the better ones in the genre. The author's use of a protagonist with his own name may confuse some readers at first, at least until they read the explanatory note at the back of the book, but the technique is not a new one. Other writers, notably Adrian Plass, have used it with great success to give their fiction a faux-biographical twist. Lee doesn't pull off the ploy as well as Plass, but he does manage to infuse his tale with a bit of the memoir atmosphere.
The episodic format of the novel, where present and past take place in alternating chapters, is also nothing new. However, Lee manages to bring both story lines into a successful merger toward the end of the book that neatly ties the two together into a satisfying, if rather predictable, conclusion.
Despite its lack of innovation, the book makes for a highly enjoyable read. Lee's journey into manhood from delinquency is inspiring, but it is Teddy's story that gives the novel its heart. The richness of Teddy's life, his love for Lizzie, and the life lessons that have shaped him make him somehow real to the reader, a person worthy of being known and remembered. This depth of characterization raises Lee's book from average to one of merit.