The Other Side of the Bridge is Mary Lawson’s second published novel, and it made me want to read her first, called Crow Lake. That’s a fair compliment.

It was the characters in The Other Side of the Bridge that made the book. The way the characters interacted and the author’s insight into their motivations reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s twin novels, Gilead and Home. And that comparison is high praise indeed.

The plot is somewhat similar to Gilead and Home. The Other SIde of the Bridge has a prodigal son, Jake, best beloved by his mother, scorned as a useless wastrel by his father. Arthur, the older son, is his father’s right hand, the dependable, steady oldest son. Jake is a lot like the Biblical Jacob, always playing an angle, restless, never quite trustworthy. However, the story is told from Arthur’s point of view. And although the reader is 95% sure that Jake is the deadbeat that his father believes him to be, there’s that five percent of doubt or hope or wondering about what might have been. What if the father in the story had tempered the mother’s favoritism and indulgence with more loving discipline?What if the mother had been able to see that her son was headed for disaster and could have corrected him more effectively.? What if both Arthur and Jake had gone away to war? Would the army have changed them? In good ways or bad?

I think these same thoughts about my own children. What if we had not decided to homeschool them? Would they be different? Would their life choices be better or worse? What if we had not missed the deadline for Computer Guru Son to apply for a scholarship to the college he thought he wanted to attend? Would he be graduating from that college now instead of stuck in a holding pattern, unable to decide what he wants to do with his life? Would Unnamed Daughter have listened or rebelled if we had forbade her to be friends with that young man who turned out to be a heartbreaker just as we thought he might be? Are all of my children stronger because we allowed them more freedom than some homeschooling Christian families I know, or should we have protected them more and for a longer time?

I don’t know. I never will know. The Other Side of the Bridge is a book about choices and about how the decisions we make change us. It does feature the story of Arthur and Jake, but also the story of Ian Christopherson, a young man on the brink of adulthood who has his own decisions to make, relationships to resolve, and forgiveness to give. Part of the story is told from Ian’s point of view as he works on Arthur Deen’s farm and comes to an understanding of some of the family dynamics and history. As you can see from this post, I found the book thought-provoking.