Drive

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

As in the concluding volume of the RanVan trilogy, Magic Nation, Wieler
departs from the traditional young-adult novel by utilizing a central
character who has left behind the adolescent world of high school.

Seven months ago, Jens Friesen, almost 19, dropped out of Grade 12 to
take a sales job at a Winnipeg Ford dealership because the family needed
money following his father’s heart attack. A Friday in March, however,
finds Jens both fired and behind in his rent. Worse still, Jens’s
younger brother, Daniel, 16, a talented blues guitarist and songwriter,
announces that he is significantly in debt to a music producer who made
a demo cassette for him. Jens decides to use the same drive that landed
him the sales position to market his brother. Using a dealership demo,
the brothers drive about rural Manitoba, with Daniel playing tapes and
Jens hawking them. Despite Jens’s offer of assistance to Daniel, the
brothers’ relationship is actually quite acrimonious.

While the action occurs over just a three-to-four-day period, Jens
reflects on events in the Friesen family history that have brought the
brothers’ sibling rivalry to this point. Readers discover that Jens is
very insecure about his place in the family; his mother has always
favored the self-centred Daniel, and Karl, the man both boys call
father, may not be Jens’s biological father. By the end of the novel,
however, the brothers have come to a credible understanding of each
other and themselves. Highly recommended.