Right by My Side

Move over, Holden Caulfield, and meet Marshall Field Finney, in the 30th anniversary edition of Right by My Side, by a celebrated chronicler of Black middle class life in the American Midwest
 
A Penguin Classic

With wit and realism, David Haynes presents a different kind of Holden Caulfield in fifteen-year-old Marshall Field Finney, an ordinary, sullen teenager who discovers storytelling as a way to ease his adolescent anger and family tensions. Living with his parents in “Washington Park,” a housing development outside St. Louis, Missouri in the 1980s, his high-strung mother walks out on him and his father, a flawed yet strong man who manages the local landfill. Marshall’s two best friends, one Black and one white, are his only allies, as they navigate school and family life together. Through these relationships, Haynes poses Marshall’s universal questions about his place in his community and what’s next in his life. Ultimately, Marshall’s story proves that people take care of each other, families take care of others, and a boy finds his own resilience to become a young man.
 
“[Haynes] belongs to the old realist tradition that believes that everyday life, if truly rendered, is more than exciting enough.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review


“Haynes offers engaging characters who tackle fundamental issues such as love, family and benevolence,” Publishers Weekly

Marshall Field Finney was named after a department store and dropped like a hot potato when his mother suddenly packed up and left.  Now Marshall lives with his hard-drinking father in a crackerbox house and rides a yellow bus through beautiful St. Louis County to his mostly white suburban school.  Caught at a crossroads, Marshall is desperately searching for something to believe in.  At stake is only the rest of his life.

In this extraordinary novel, David Haynes tells the heartrending story of Marshall’s journey through a broken world, where his father’s new girlfriend, a poem by Yeats and a white teacher with big plans for her favorite students all seem to have the power to change him.  And as Marshall struggles to make sense of his life, the haunting letters begin to arrive from his runaway mother: "We are linked tighter than fine gold chains.  Who knows when we’ll next be together–"

A tale of the ties that bind and the ties that fall away, Right by My Side is a cry from the heart, and a masterful novel of love and awakening by one of America’s most gifted young writers.



Winner of the ALA’s 1994 Best Book for Young Adults Award as well as the Minnesota Voices Project Award, Right by My Side is the heartrending story of 15-year-old Marshall Field Finney. When his mother suddenly takes off to find herself, Marshall is left with his hard-drinking father. Every day, he makes the long journey to his affluent, mostly white suburban high school. Caught at a crossroads, he is searching desperately for something he can hold on to. At stake is the rest of his life.



Just as Marchall begins to find a few signs that give him hope for his futures, he receives a series of haunting letters from his mother, who reminds him that they are "linked tighter than fine gold chains." A heartwarming tale of the ties that bind–and the ones that fall away–Right by My Side is a masterful novel of love and awakening by one of America’s most gifted young writers. –>