Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

Book Overview

On a summer day in 1946 Sally Werner, the precocious young daughter of hardscrabble Pennsylvania farmers, secretly accepts her cousin's invitation to ride his new motorcycle. Like so much of what follows in Sally's life, it's an impulsive decision with dramatic and far-reaching consequences. Soon she abandons her home to begin a daring journey of self-creation, the truth of which she entrusts only with her granddaughter and namesake, six decades later...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316051683
• ISBN13: 9780316051682
• Release Date: July 2010
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Book Review: April & Oliver

This story swept me away into Sally's life and mind. The story flowed like the river that ties the characters of this saga. The writing engulfed me. This story is one that I will never forget and am deeply grateful to JoAnna Scott for writing. Scott is the author of nine books. Of these nine books, one was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize and two were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award. If these books are anything like Follow Me, I can certainly understand why. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, this book should be nominated, as well. Follow Me is an epic tale of women and the hard choices that they are often faced with. This is the heartbreaking story of what happens to families when adversity infiltrates them. This is a memoir of love that was never meant to be lost, but was stolen from the lovers. This is a woman's search for redemption for a life that she couldn't possibly replace with other choices; the outcomes were destined and unavoidable. This is a tragic song of a man who lost what should have been his. All of this is told by a granddaughter who pieces together the remnants of fantasy with the pieces truth searching to be found. On Sher's "Out of Ten Scale:" Is there any doubt, whatsover, that I am going to rate this book a 10 OUT OF 10? Of course, not! I deserves it! I only wish our bookclub read hardcovers, because this will make A GREAT BOOK CLUB discussion.

Detailed Storyline Leaves You Guessing

Sixteen year old Sally Werner lives in rural Pennsylvania. It is the year 1946. She accepts a ride on the motorcycle of her cousin, Daniel, a decision that changes her life forever. The end up having intercourse, an act Sally didn't consent to. She becomes pregnant, and is blamed for ruining Daniel's life. Daniel is eager to marry Sally, Sally would rather die than marry him. Forty-eight hours after giving birth to their son, Sally leaves the child in the care of her family and runs away from a future that is not her own. Her first encounter is with the Mason family. She accepts the role as housekeeper from seventy year old "Uncle Mason." They build a relationship of trust of over the matter of two years that Sally works for him. However, while cleaning, Sally discovers a box that contains Mason's entire life savings. She is no thief, yet she can't get the money out of her mind. When her past catches up to her the local gossip begins spreading the details of Sally's past, she must pack up and leave this family she's grown to love. She goes to the box holding Uncle Mason's money, only planning on taking a small amount, when Mason's voice appears in the darkness, demanding that she take it all. Sally takes all the money, and once again runs away. Thus begins Sally's legacy of moving from town to town, running from her own past. She uses the Tuskagee River as a path to her future, stopping off at small towns in an attempt to settle. Each time her need to flee awakens, and Sally must pack up and move on. This continues after the birth of her daughter, Penelope, is born. She can't seem to shake the guilt of abandoning her son. She sends letters home to her parents and includes a small amount of mone when she's able. Yet it isn't until almost two decades later that Sally begins to wonder what happened to her son. .. FOLLOW ME details the lives of Sally, her daughter Penelope, and eventually her grandaughter and traces the lies created by her family to keep her in the dark about her son's existence. Just how far will they go to keep Sally form learning the truth? Although parts of FOLLOW ME seemed to drag a bit, it didn't take long for me to become absorbed in the characters. The writing was powerful and descriptive. The characters were all well-rounded and seemed to share the same destiny, no matter how hard they tried to take control. I recommend FOLLOW ME to any reader that enjoys a detailed storyline with twists and turns that leaves you questioning until the very end.

Beautiful and emotional

Sally Werner, a Pennsylvania farm girl, decides to throw caution to the wind and take a ride on her cousin's motorcycle. This choice will change her life forever. A teenager mother in 1946, she abandons her baby boy with her family and runs away to start a new life only a few miles away. Sally runs to escape the people she feels judges her for her mistakes. Yet the unfortunate nature of her life is that she always feels like she has to run away and start over again. Most of the time, this is the result of her own feelings of threat and failure. With each new place that Sally runs to, she adopts a new name, a name she feels will change her fortune and reflects something she has left behind or wishes to be. Along the way Sally has another child, a daughter named Penelope. As Sally runs, so too does Penelope until Penelope meets auburn haired Abe and falls in love. Sally's story is told by her namesake and granddaughter, the child of Penelope and Abe. Towards the end of the book, the shocking family `secret' is revealed by Sally and drives Abe away. Scott has a beautiful way with words. The imagery she uses to describe the world around Sally invokes a clear picture of the trickling Tuskee River and the small, rural Pennsylvania towns Sally hops to and from. There are times when Sally expresses a self-doubt and detachment that I have felt many times. I can see a lot of myself in Sally, especially in the way that she regards the world as a struggling outsider looking in, always waiting for her moment to feel connected. Sally's internal dynamic is interesting as well because she is a contradicting mixture of strong and assured, but also weak and afraid. It takes a lot of guts to pick up and start over again, but Sally does this each time because she wants to escape the people around her. So, it's hard to tell what Sally is and that makes her more realistic. Sally is a bundle of one inconsistency after another as most of us are. Sally has a hard life, but she doesn't make it any better for herself each time she runs away. The thing she is good at, singing, she purposefully stuffs away for a long time. Again, this is something that I find familiarity in. Sally is not without remorse for leaving her son behind, or for leaving some of the people who helped her early on as she was just getting on her feet. Even as she runs away, she always looks back on the people she has left behind. I honestly enjoyed this book from page one. Since Sally's life is cut up into chunks, each stage is paced just right that I didn't feel any lag in the plot. As I said above, the descriptions are both beautiful and believable. Scott is a truly talented writer. With just a few words, she is able to evoke emotion and reality all in one breath. It takes talent to captivate, which Follow Me certain does.

Fantastic multi-generational story

When Sally Werner was 16, she had a baby boy by her cousin, Daniel. Two days later, she left the baby on her parent's kitchen table and ran. This is a pattern Sally followed for years - she ran when someone from her old town recognized her, she ran when she found out she was pregnant, and she ran after an old boyfriend found her and assaulted her. Sally finally settled into life in a small town and raised her daughter, Penelope, on her own. When Penelope's father showed up, she decided to allow him into her daughter's life. He and his mother do their best to win Penelope over by buying her gifts. Sally found a job at a law firm and was able to earn enough money to send some home to the son she abandoned years ago. She also began an affair with one of the lawyer's in the firm. Feeling neglected, Penelope decided to move in with her father. She came home to her mother's after he became abusive. When Penelope was in college, she fell in love and became pregnant. She and her boyfriend, Abraham, are devoted to each other and decided they would share a life together. That is, until Sally tells Abraham a secret from her past that caused him to run away. FOLLOW ME by Joanna Scott is a wonderful character driven story. At first, I was a little frustrated with Sally because her solution to every problem seemed to be to run away. After I read this, "It was all so confusing. She had always intended to live a righteous life. In the midst of any decision, she'd always thought she was doing what was justified and necessary. But how could she know, how did anyone know what the repercussions would be?" I realized that Sally is just like most people, doing the best they can in life. This story really captivated me, and I found that I flew through the book (especially the second half) even though it's over 400 pages long. If you love character driven novels or family stories, you will love this book.

Follow this story wherever it may take you.

Joanna Scott's book gives us a story told mainly by Sally Bliss, a granddaughter of Sally Werner aka Mole aka Bliss. It is essentially a recounting of Sally Werner's life, gathered from what she told her granddaughter and what Sally Bliss was also told by her father via recorded cassettes. In 1946 rural Pennsylvania, 16-year-old Sally Werner lets herself be taken for a ride on her cousin Daniel Werner's motorcycle. The enthralling ride, followed by what Sally thought was innocent but exhilarating flirting and kissing, ends in Daniel raping (in my opinion) Sally. She then is left carrying his baby and with guilt imposed upon her by her family that she was the one who tricked Daniel and made him commit that sinful act. Sally proceeds to deliver a baby boy, to abandon him on the kitchen table in her parent's house and to run away in pursuit of a new life. The fruits of that pursuit don't always turn out what Sally might have wanted but her optimism for life and belief in destiny help her along the way to live an amazing, sometimes tragic, sometimes happy, but never mundane, life. Admittedly, Follow Me is a little slow at the beginning and somewhat difficult to get into, but I implore you to keep reading because it gets better and better with each page. The style of Ms. Scott's writing is very distinct and present from the first page. Her use of verbs creating stand-alone sentences makes it seem that it is a dream we're reading about, an urgent dream, sometimes a nightmare, from which Sally Werner wants to run away. It's also like Tuskee River flowing north and outlining Sally's journey through life. This writing is very intriguing and it kept me wanting to read more until I became absorbed by the book and couldn't stop even if I wanted to, which I didn't. The story of Sally's life, her actions driven by the need to run away from town to town, her belief that she would always be haunted by leaving her son behind, are intoxicating. Without knowing when or how, I was pulled into the whirl of that river Sally had become and even when I wasn't reading the book, it was constantly in my thoughts. Follow Me is so many things that one could really write a whole essay on it. Not only is it a saga spanning three generations, but also a tragic love story, a depiction of how much our lives are run by chances we're not aware of and a tribute to the finest American storytelling of which I had been so unappreciative before Scott's book landed in my hands. I do not like the term "modern classic", but Follow Me might very well become one.