THE CODGER AND THE SPARROW

A widower and a teenager set off on an important road trip together in Semegran’s contemporary novel.

In Austin, Texas, 65-year-old Hank O’Sullivan spends a lot of time at his favorite local bar drinking away his loneliness after losing his wife and daughter in a car accident. In a parking lot scuffle outside a bar, Hank fights back in self-defense and earns himself a court-mandated sentence of 40 hours of community service. It’s there, while cleaning up trash on the side of the highway, he meets 16-year-old Luis Delgado, a Puerto Rican boy serving his own community service hours after being caught trespassing. Luis, a talented artist, lives with his father in the same neighborhood as Hank. After Luis and Hank form an unlikely friendship, Luis finds out Hank plans to visit Houston to reignite an old high school romance and asks if he can tag along to reconnect with his estranged mother, who also lives in Houston and who Luis hasn’t heard from since he was young. In a hot pink 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, the duo embarks on a road trip filled with drama, car troubles, a lesson in map reading, and lots of waffles. Semegran proficiently shifts between Hank’s and Luis’ points of view, which helps both characters feel fleshed out. An overuse of description can sometimes slow the pacing (“He set the bag on the carpet, then put his shoes on—the black wool sock on his right foot with a hole in it for his big toe to receive fresh air, the cotton sock on the left the shade of coffee with heavy cream”), but the unique relationship between the two unlikely, sympathetic pals keeps the story rolling.

A fun, if talky, tale of an endearing May-December friendship.