Ember's Journey
She rolled off the line as a one-of-one. She became the heart of a family.
Detroit, in the wake of the 1973 strike. Line worker Charlie Novak leads the crew that builds a special-order station wagon in a paint color nobody's seen before - a deep reddish-brown the workers call "Sunset Ember." They name her Ember. Charlie writes down her VIN and carries it in his wallet for the rest of his life.
Ember is never just a car. She's there when Charlie is fired for standing up to a reckless boss - and given to him outright by the dealer who knows she was always his. She's the car his daughter learns to wrench on. And when twelve-year-old Lila loses her mother to cancer, Charlie takes her in - and Ember becomes Lila's driving teacher, her refuge, and an inheritance of a different kind.
Spanning five decades, Ember's Journey follows one extraordinary station wagon through the lives she touches: a widowed auto worker who builds things - including, as his dying wife charged him, "a good life"; a grieving girl who grows into the boardroom at eighteen, fighting to save the very factory that built her car; and a plant full of workers who refuse to let the soul of the place be sold off.
Warm, big-hearted, and steeped in Detroit blue-collar life - a family saga about the bonds we form, the promises we keep, and the unexpected ways the things we build end up building us.
For readers of The Art of Racing in the Rain, A Man Called Ove, and Remarkably Bright Creatures.
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