"The Road to Tender Hearts" | Reviewed by Chris Stuckenschneider

Scoot over Ove—allow me to introduce a new literary curmudgeon that just might usurp you in popularity. Meet PJ Halliday from Pondville, Massachusetts, a big hearted 63-year-old who calls the small town home. Belly up to the bar with PJ and get to know a host of other engaging townsfolk in a novel certain to charm, with its funny antics and touching times too.

“The Road to Tender Hearts,” by Annie Harnett, is an unexpected pleasure, a book that simply can’t be missed and captivates from first page to last.

            PJ has never left Pondville. He’s a good guy but a total mess, despite the fact that he hit the jackpot in a scratch-off and won a million and a half, which he’s mostly given away to charity or spent buying a round or two. PJ drinks too much, lies when he doesn’t need to, and can’t be counted on when the going gets tough.

Chief among PJ’s ongoing problems is grief, having lost his oldest daughter in a tragic accident in high school. PJ also misses his adored ex-wife, Ivy. She gave up trying to get PJ to stop drinking and left him for his best friend, Fred, a retired judge. The couple live close to PJ, who regularly has breakfast with the couple, and considers them his best friends. PJ is such a soft heart for kids and animals that Ivy cuts tragic news stories out of the newspapers before she passes them on to her ex. When Fred and Ivy tell PJ they are going on an extended trip to Alaska, he doesn’t know how he’ll handle them being gone. They assure him they will return to Pondville to get married. PJ will serve as Fred’s best man, an honor PJ embraces.

In the newspaper, PJ happens upon an obituary that mentions Michelle Cobb, his old high school flame. Her husband has kicked the bucket, and PJ is determined to drive to Arizona, to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community, to propose to her and bring her back to Pondville, to convince her “…there was so much life they still had to live.”

PJ hurriedly puts his plans into place. He’s never seen the country and wants to stop at sites along the way. PJ doesn’t make the cross-country odyssey alone—he can’t drive, you see, having lost his license to DWIs. Chauffeuring him in a van he’s borrowed from Fred, who’s off in Alaska and clueless about the trip, is PJ’s youngest daughter Sophie, who begrudgingly joins him, along with two youngsters, Ollie and Luna, distantly related kids who have just been placed in his custody, as if PJ can parent anyone? Rounding out the passenger list is Pancakes, a cat that’s escaped from a senior citizen facility in Pondville and found its way into PJ’s home and heart.

Themes abound in this poignant novel that’s both comic and tragic, black humor abounding as the book tackles loneliness, grief, alcoholism, overriding all with doses of love dispensed by a hero with clay feet who is pure goodness to the core.

This book is laugh-out-loud funny at times, Pancakes a prophet interjecting wise words of caution, asides to readers that are certain to illicit chuckles. But there are tears too in “The Road to Tender Hearts” a journey tale that dispenses wisdom and some surprises along the way too.

Put this endearing page turner at the top of your reading list. It’s a pure delight.

Buy the Book.