54 pages • 1 hour read
Matt RichtelA Deadly Wandering
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Tragedy and Redemption
A large number of the figures in the book have a tragic event happen to them, followed by a hard path to redemption, reconciliation and healing. Even America itself follows this path, if the definition of trauma can be expanded to include an epidemic of fatalities related to texting and driving.
Terryl’s troubled childhood not only gives her a unique capacity to empathize with victims but also acts as an example for the kind of household she doesn’t want to create. Because of this, Terryl’s daughters thrive in a way her circumstances didn’t allow her to as a child.
We see different variations of this general story in other figures. Leila and Jackie struggle to come to terms with their husbands’ death and eventually find themselves able to forgive. Don Linton and Tony Baird have also transcended their past mistakes and trauma. Reggie’s tragedy is front and center and slightly different in that he caused it. His journey is more complicated and involves a path toward truth, before he can heal.
The Allure and Danger of Distracted Driving
One moral of the book, which is difficult to disagree with, is: Don’t text and drive. But not only is this a book about the dangers of distracted driving, it is about why the problem has arisen in the first place. The allure of being distracted by technology is so strong that most people, once the distracted-driving-caused accidents began to happen, admitted that texting or cell phone use while operating a car was dangerous, and yet, strangely, it didn’t stop them from doing it.
This is not just a case of thinking one can multitask effectively; there’s something deeper going on, which the science bears out: Smartphones are becoming disturbingly effective at harnessing our attention on multiple levels. The way that human attention works in the first place is crucial to understanding why it is so difficult not to do. This makes the policy and education debate more complicated than similar debates around drunk driving and seatbelt safety.
The Meaning of Heroism
Just as the early parts of the book considered what happens to the victims of a tragedy in negative terms, towards its end Richtel compares two people who have come through traumatic experiences in a more positive way. The implicit questions the book never fully articulates is: How do we decide when someone is a hero? And why do some people get the label when others—possibly more deserving others—do not?
One candidate is Terryl, who suffered childhood abuse at the hands of a monstrous stepfather and at best a negligent mother. Nothing that happened to Terryl was her fault, and it would not be surprising if her life story continued replicating the misery of her youth in some way. Instead, however, Terryl triumphs over her childhood experiences, parlaying her traumatic memories into victims’ advocacy work, and making sure that she does not repeat the mistakes her mother made—Terryl’s kids are growing up in a supportive, tolerant, and positive environment. It is not a stretch of the imagination to call this woman a hero, though no one in the book seems to do so.
Another candidate is Reggie, the teenager indirectly responsible for the deaths of Keith and Jim, fathers and rocket scientists. After making the bad choice to text while driving—arguably not realizing how much danger it would put others on the road in—Reggie knowingly doubles down on this wrongdoing by repeatedly and insistently lying about what really happened. Eventually, when Reggie finally comes clean about his role in the accident and commits to taking the community service responsibilities of his sentence seriously, he gets praise from everyone including the prosecutor and Terryl. Richtel’s book goes out of its way to describe the bravery and humility with which Reggie goes about his life—a life that now revolves around making empathetic speeches to Oprah, professional athletes, and other famous figures. While we of course can applaud Reggie for the way he has finally accepted blame for the accident, does his tale of triumph over adversity make him more of a hero than Terryl? Does it make him more heroic than the rocket scientists that died, whose research we know little about from this book, but whose families will forever be shattered?
