Chasing Jordan

By Heidi W. Boehringer

As Meg approaches home, with her daughter in the back seat, she spies her husband spying on the neighbour. The neighbour is gardening in provocatively short shorts. In the heat of this moment of surprise and suspicion, she hits and kills her two-year-old son, Jordan. Meg?s fierce struggle for forgiveness leads her down a twisted path, seeking to save others and spying on people in the hope that she will learn how to cope with grief and guilt. As her marriage unravels, she recalls her own childhood, dominated by an alcoholic and promiscuous mother, and an earlier accident that changed her life forever. Chasing Jordan?s dark humour is compelling yet totally unpredictable, showing that the road to redemption is as precarious as it is healing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852428937
• ISBN13: 9781852428938
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Remember to blink while reading.

For about 20 minutes after reading Chasing Jordan I just sat in a daze. I have always been an avid book reader, but very few books have touched and affected me in the way this novel has. This is truly one of the most vivid, having to remind myself to blink, non-stop page-turning until 2AM in the morning books. Chasing Jordan kept my heart pounding the whole time. This is not a happy book by all means, though one about hope, self-forgiveness and holding on to your sanity with one hard grip. The book starts off with Meg driving home and spotting her husband eyeing her provocative neighbor who likes to show more skin than less. She feels all her suspicions about him having an affair are true. Not realizing her son is running in front of the car at that very moment, Meg accidentally hits and kills her son instantly. I cried and felt Meg's pain so much from a mother's perspective. I loved how the author was so unforgiving and brutally honest with her characters flaws. It made me reflect on my own and hope to be as strong as Meg. She went through some tough times and I only hoped the best for her. By the way, I absolutely loathed Susie, (the neighbor.) What a major hoo-hoo! I was sorry when I finished the last page. I wanted it to go on and on. You will remember this story long after it's over. SLIGHT SPOILER: I was a little confused by the ending. I was left feeling just a slight unsatisfied with the way the book just kinda left you hanging without knowing what was going to happen to Meg. You invest so much emotion in Meg's character, I just thought some explanation would have tied up the book a little more nicely. Regardless of this miniscule disappointment, I believe this story is still worth investing your time in reading. Can't wait to read it again in the near future.

Sit up and read

After the first two pages there is no way you can do anything but sit up straight and read this book. It is a gripping tale of tragedy and recovery that has you turning page after page. It is in your face writing that I could not put down. I rushed out to read the follow-up Crossing the Dark and will line up for any future titles.

Didn't want it to end

I read through this novel faster than I thought I would. This book compels you from the first couple of pages and when you finish the first chapter, you know that the journey that this family will face will be unbearable. I felt that Boehringer left a lot to the reader's imagination with regard to what Meg's husband was really doing behind closed doors and I found myself becoming increasingly angry at this character. This novel is emotionally overwhelming and well written and I have several friends who can't wait for me to lend it to them. The only complaint that I have is that you don't truly know what happened to Meg in the end...but that is what our imagination is for!

Very highly recommended

After a tragic opening scene where Meg accidently kills her own son after being distracted by her husband eyeing the girl next door, we follow Meg in the aftermath of the accident, where her life is unravelling. This is an intense story, where the characters are far from perfect but very human. I thought that the relationship between Meg and her husband was shocking sometimes, but awfully true. Heidi Boehringer does a good job at not being patronising or leading us to judge her characters, even when they're pushed to the edge. In this story you'll be taken on a ride through what remains of Meg's life, her guilt, fears, attempts at reconstructing her life. It's a really good story and I highly recommend it.

This book is perfection. Boehringer's debut is a success

It's not very often that a novel grabs me by the throat and won't let go. Not often at all that I get an adrenaline rush from discovering a brave, freewheeling plot, coupled with a raw, uncensored voice. Heidi Boehringer has written such a book with her stunning debut, "Chasing Jordan." When the novel opens, Meg is driving down her street in an SUV, watching her husband ogle their next door neighbor and in that instant, she accidentally hits and kills her son, Jordan. The novel turns on this unimaginable event, while giving forth Meg's past griefs: her father's infidelity and mother's alcoholism, which led to a previous, horrific accident. Meg unravels in the aftershocks of Jordan's death and the growing chasm in her marriage, yet draws comfort and resilience from her baby daughter, Madeline. I cannot say that I know what it is like to lose a child, however, Boehringer's lyrical and compelling writing is more than elegiac. She pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction as she examines loss, betrayal and love in a multi-layered, minutely observed narrative with one of the strongest, most honest voices writing today. This landmark novel is so well-rendered and artfully paced that I stayed up well into the night to finish it. Boehringer is a writer with perfect pitch. She is a master not only of character development, but also of dialogue - each piece, perfect in and of itself, fitting together into something even more wonderful. Her emotional instincts are unerring and her prose unfurls beautifully and with a precision and originality I haven't experienced since "Catcher in the Rye." Like Salinger, Boehringer is brave in her use of language and her raw, emotional honesty never hits a false note. In "Chasing Jordan," Meg's reflections on modern womanhood, as she stands at the crossroads of grief and survival, will long resonate in all of us. Coincidentally, the highest praise I can heap on any book, and what has always been my benchmark in judging a novel, is one of Holden Caulfield's sentiments in "Catcher in the Rye:" "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though." No, it doesn't happen much. But with "Chasing Jordan" it does. And I'd like to call Heidi Boehringer up on the phone and tell her just that. I'd also tell her to hurry the hell up with her next novel.