My Abandonment

Caroline and her father live a simple, meager existence, shrouded in Forest Park, a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. Ostensibly homeless, they have built a secluded home in the woods, complete with garden, library, and shower. Caroline reads the encyclopedia and runs barefoot in the forest, exploring the boundaries of her domain. Occasionally, she and her father visit the nearby town for food, the library, his SS check, but mostly stay out of the reach of other people.


Peter Rock's My Abandonment is really a huge surprise. This slim novel examines their lives with dazzling, electric prose, starting with the childish naivete of the opening pages, to the shock of her father's subsequent unraveling, to the quiet mournful remembrance at show more the end. As each chapter unfolds, a stranger, more twisted history evolves, yet Rock writes with a tenderness that belies the darker truths.

Read this. Jeez, it will only take an hour. Okay, maybe two, but it's worth it.

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Yikes. It’s good, but yikes. The horror in this novel is my horror. Other topics of horror--blood, gore, filth, bugs and other creepy-crawlies, demons and blaspemy--don't faze me. But this novel horrified me like few others could. I found it hard to put down--read it in an afternoon or so--but it left me heartsick, haunted, horrified, hopeless. For some people that's a good thing, but now I know I don't enjoy it. So I guess it's only fair to give it four stars, but those four stars don't mean my usual "really liked it".

This book is enthralling in the way that you can't look away when you witness a horrible accident. From the beginning you wonder just what is going on, as you follow the exploits of Caroline, a 13 year old girl who lives with "Father" in Forest Park, a huge nature preserve in Oregon. They live "off the grid"--they have a hidden camp and spend their days making sure very few people notice them. So while Caroline excels in wilderness survival skills her knowledge of certain things is limited to what she has learned from her encyclopedias and her lack of human relationships beyond her bond with her Father made me ache for her. One day a runner accidentally discovers their camp and Caroline and her Father are taken in by the authorities. show more What happens next is a story full of ups and downs where the reader is rooting for Caroline to survive and find a place where she can be herself yet feel at home with other people.
This book sparked quite a lively debate at our discussion group as the readers had strong emotional reactions to the events of Caroline's life. It's also intriguing that this novel was inspired by a true story of an actual father/daughter pair that were discovered living in Forest Park. They disappeared after shortly after they were resettled, leaving behind a real life mystery. The ending of this book also leaves some unanswered questions, which also makes it a great book for discussion since the readers can all share their opinions on what they think "really" happened. Peter Rock definitely has a wonderful imagination and I'd recommend this to anyone looking for something just a little different and thought provoking. show less

At one level, a tale of 'back woods' survival; on another, a psychological study of a daughter and father relationship and shifting needs and loyalties; on yet another level, a look at what it is to live beyond social norms. All of this, plus wonderful writing (shades of Cormac McCarthy) makes this one of the most memorable books this reader has encountered in a long time. Caroline and her father live simply in a large city park -- homeless but resourceful, their days have a kind of quiet rhythm and they lack for little. When they are discovered, they are imprisoned (briefly), forced to live on a farm (from which they ultimately escape) and begin a real life on the lam. There are dangers and disasters, many twists and turns, yet the end show more is surprisingly upbeat. Many questions remain: who is Caroline, really? Who is her "father"? Is their relationship simply that of a father and daughter? Is Caroline really happy or is she a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome? What price must be paid to fit into society? show less

In My Abandonment, based on a true story, 13 year old Caroline tells of life with her father, a troubled war veteran. For the last four years, the two have lived a seemingly idyllic life in the middle of a large park in Portland, Oregon. Hiding from "followers" both real and imagined, she and her troubled, loving father live in a small underground cave, moving camp periodically to avoid drawing attention to their solitary life. Caroline learns the ways of the forest well, and moves like a shadow among hikers and transients. An inevitable mistake exposes them, though, and they are swiftly arrested. Well-meaning social workers place them on a farm, where Father performs labor and Caroline is expected to attend public schools. Though show more Caroline adapts rapidly to her new surroundings, Father refuses to live in such a captive state, and they steal themselves away. Instead of finding freedom, their lives unravel rapidly, as Caroline's growing self-awareness begins to butt up against Father's deepening paranoia and fear. Caroline, who has spent so long living in the present, is finally forced to grapple with the murky secrets in her past, and plan for a future that she must create on her own terms.

This harrowing coming of age story is told in a spellbinding voice by a truly unique narrator. As Caroline reveals clues about her past and the truth of her life with Father, it is impossible not to grow deeply attached to her, making her trials all the more poignant. Not only does this novel draw an empathetic portrait of homelessness in America, it asks the reader difficult questions about the nature of family, and about people's capacity to endure incredible hardships with resilience and strength. show less

A strange, compelling novel carried mesmerically forward by the sweet, honest, eerily innocent voice of its 13-year-old narrator, Caroline. For four years she's lived in Oregon's Forest Park with Father (is he?), undetected in their various makeshift shelters on the huge preserve. She is home-schooled in the most terrifying sense. Father is a deeply paranoid PTSD sufferer who--we find out very late in the novel--has kidnapped Caroline from her foster home (even kept her handcuffed until Stockholm syndrome kicked in) and taken them both on the lam. Mid-book, they are discovered by the police, taken for any homeless pair, and placed in a paradise--father as hand at a rich man's farm--by the kindness of strangers. Caroline has new clothes, show more a bike, is surrounded by the horses she loves (real ones--too real? she clings throughout the book to "Randy," the acupuncture horse model into which she's slipped a note with her former name and around whose neck she's tied "her blue ribbon," which turns out to be one of the missing-child ribbons tied around trees when she first disappeared) and is set to start school in a month and perhaps fulfill her craving for friendship, when Father "escapes" with her. It feels tragic--perhaps her last chance to lead a "normal" life, this loving child tagging after her father like a loyal dog as he, in his delusion, destroys it. By the end of the book, though, having met the odd, half-feral young woman she becomes after Father has been killed and she's burned his body and continues to live off what are apparently his disability checks, the reader has to wonder if such a thing had ever been possible for her, if it already had come too late. From Father's journal, copied into Caroline's to become part of this book: "Every problem I have comes from believing something to be true that is not true." show less

The basis for the film "Leave No Trace" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt389217), and one of those unusual occasions when the film is a lot better than the book. The book is Rock's imagined take on a true episode of a man living wild in the Pacific Northwest forest with his pre-teen daughter. When discovered, well-meaning law enforcement and social workers tried to help, placed them on a horse farm with a job for the dad, school for the girl... and not long after, the pair disappeared again and no one knows what became of them. Rock builds the first part of the story convincingly, told in the naive, almost affectless tone of the girl's viewpoint. The father is clearly damaged, presumably from wartime experiences, paranoid and show more overprotective; the girl has learned to cope. She is brave, intelligent, and loving, and thriving in some ways. But once the conflict between "civilization" and their isolated life begins, the story - all Rock's imagination now - rather falls apart. It becomes something darker and more thriller-ish, suggesting kidnap and captivity. Perhaps the girl's flat tone is a defense against memories she cannot bear, but it doesn't match the earlier tone of their relationship in the book. Ultimately, the title may not mean what we initially think it does. I will just say as a librarian, I rolled my eyes at the final resolution of working in a library as the final refuge of an irredeemable misfit. Sigh. (Shades of It's a Wonderful Life... gack.)

See the movie instead. Wonderful actors, a nuanced relationship, true heartbreak, and respect for the characters and the paths they finally choose. show less