THE MOSTLY TRUE STORY OF TANNER & LOUISE

An octogenarian and a 21-year-old college dropout form an unlikely bond as they travel across the country.

Louise Wilt has lived three lives. Currently 84, with an on-the-mend hip, she has been forced to hire young college dropout Tanner Quimby to help drive her to her various doctors’ offices and other appointments. Tanner is also healing from an injury. Falling off a two-story balcony broke her leg, ended her college soccer career and scholarship eligibility, and destroyed her dreams of playing professionally. They are an unlikely pair. And then they disappear. Jules, Louise’s oldest child, calls the police to report them missing, and much to everyone’s surprise, this leads to an FBI hunt because her mother is a suspect in a major jewel heist from 1975 who has been living under an alias since then. The story swaps among Louise’s, Tanner’s, and the FBI agent’s points of view, and shifts in time from Louise and Tanner’s middle-of-the-night decision to leave Atlanta to the FBI’s hunt for the pair that begins after they have been missing for three days, to create an engrossing tale that is not quite what it appears to be in the beginning. The story addresses themes of aging, friendship, abusive relationships, the many forms of love, morality, the line between criminality and doing the “right” thing, and what it meant to be a woman in the 1960s and '70s and how so much—and so little—has changed since then. Oakley manages that last part delicately, without veering into misandry: Bad men are very much bad people, but it's not just because of their gender. Fans of the Netflix series Dead to Me will likely enjoy this take on the bonds of female friendship.

An engaging tale, told well, that looks at unlikely friendships and how doing the right thing can involve very hard choices.