Being with Henry Summary
Martha Brooks

Being with Henry Summary

In terms of its structure, Being with Henry resembles a quest tale in which a young boy is sent away from his home, is tested by the world, and then returns, having gained wisdom both from those individuals he encounters and from his experiences. But the work offers much more than this simple story line, for Being with Henry is also, in part, a book about role reversal in which a teen assumes a parenting function with regard to his emotionally weak single mother and a middle-aged daughter over-protectively mothers her widowed eighty-yearold father. Being with Henry demonstrates the surprising commonalities shared by those who are very different ages.

The book's central character, Laker Wyatt, first appeared in "The Kindness of Strangers," one of the stories in the collection Traveling on into the Light. Interestingly, that same collection contains three stories that feature Sidonie and Kieran, characters from...

(read more from the Short Guide)