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Summary
Summary
What would you do if you could spend one last day with someone you lost? From the award winning author of The Serpent King comes an acclaimed story of grief, guilt and the chance to say goodbye. And don't miss the author's highly anticipated new book, In the Wild Light!
"Gorgeous, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming." --Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything.
Where are you guys? Text me back. That's the last message Carver Briggs will ever send his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. He never thought that it would lead to their death.
Now Carver can't stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, a powerful judge is pressuring the district attorney to open up a criminal investigation.
Luckily, Carver has some unexpected allies: Eli's girlfriend, the only person to stand by him at school; Dr. Mendez, his new therapist; and Blake's grandmother, who asks Carver to spend a "goodbye day" together to share their memories and say a proper farewell.
Soon the other families are asking for their own goodbye day with Carver--but he's unsure of their motives. Will they all be able to make peace with their losses, or will these goodbye days bring Carver one step closer to a complete breakdown or--even worse--prison?
"Hold on to your heart: this book will wreck you, fix you, and most definitely change you." --Becky Albertalli, Morris Award-winning author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Author Notes
Jeff Zentner is the acclaimed author of The Serpent King. In addition to writing, he is also a singer-songwriter and guitarist who has recorded with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Debbie Harry. Goodbye Days is his love letter to the city of Nashville and the talented people who populate it. He lives in Nashville with his wife and son. You can follow him on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter at @jeffzentner.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Carver Briggs already feels responsible when his three best friends are killed in a car accident after he sent a "Where are you guys?" text message to the driver. Now it seems as though the whole town wants him to be prosecuted, and he's having debilitating panic attacks. When one friend's grandmother suggests they pay tribute to the deceased by spending a "goodbye day" swapping stories and doing what he loved, Carver finds a cathartic way to atone for his perceived sins. From the opening line, Zentner (The Serpent King) expertly channels Carver's distinctive voice as a 17-year-old writer turned "funeral expert" who argues with himself about girls and retains glimmers of easy wit despite the weight of his grief and guilt. Flashbacks and daydreams capture the jovial spirit of the four members of the so-called Sauce Crew, glimpses of sophomore shenanigans interspersed with poignant admissions only best friends would share. Racial tensions, spoiled reputations, and broken homes all play roles in an often raw meditation on grief and the futility of entertaining what-ifs when faced with awful, irreversible events. Ages 14-up. Agent: Charlie Olsen, Inkwell Management. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Carver Briggss life is upended when a text he sends results in the deaths of his three best friends, Blake, Eli, and Mars, in an automobile accident, weeks before the beginning of senior year. Now hes struggling to find equilibrium, plagued by guilt, shame, and grief, at odds with his friends families, and under the pall of potential criminal charges. Will a goodbye day with Blakes grandmother, spent doing the things Blake loved to do, bring them both some peace? And what do the other families want from him? Crouch inhabits Carvers first-person, present-tense narration with an adolescent intensity matched to Zentners fierce, consuming prose. But his finest achievement is the vibrant exuberance of the four-man Sauce Crew themselves, as Carver and his friends riff and joust, in flashbacks and daydreams, making plain just how much has been lost. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* I may have killed my three best friends, 17-year-old Carver agonizes. How so? He sent a text to his friend Mars, knowing the boy was driving at the time; distracted by replying to the text, Mars crashed into a stopped truck, killing himself and Carver's two other best friends, Blake and Eli. Now Mars' father, a judge, has called on the district attorney to open an investigation and weigh charges of criminally negligent homicide against Carver. Bereft and virtually friendless, riddled by guilt, and overwhelmed by stress, Carver begins having panic attacks, which send him into therapy. Interestingly, he makes an unlikely new friend in Eli's girlfriend, Jesmyn, but when he tells her that he desires more than friendship with her, she rejects him. Meanwhile, Carver's attempts at atonement with Blake's grandmother, Eli's parents, and Mars' father meet with mixed success, feeding his subconscious desire for punishment. Zentner does an excellent job in creating empathetic characters, especially his protagonist Carver, a budding writer whose first-person account of his plight is artful evidence of his talent. The story builds suspense while developing not only empathetic but also multidimensional characters in both Carver and Jesmyn. The result is an absorbing effort with emotional and psychological integrity.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2016 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Teenage writer Carver Briggs dreamed of creating something that would change the world, but he was content to spend his time laughing with Sauce Crew-his best friends Blake, Mars, and Eli. When all three friends die in a texting-related car accident, Carver's dreams crash as he realizes the text he sent to Mars may have been the direct cause. Faced with not only the loss of his friends but also his own guilt, threats of an impending criminal investigation, and ostracism by his classmates, Carver must learn to pick up the pieces of his life and move forward. With the help of his supportive family, Eli's girlfriend Jesmyn, therapist Dr. Mendez, and Blake's Nana Betsy, Carver embarks on a series of Goodbye Days, designed to share memories of Sauce Crew with their families, which teaches him that there is no right way to grieve and that there are many sides to the same story-or person. Michael Crouch delightfully brings to life all of the characters in Zentner's novel. VERDICT This is a thought-provoking must-read for teens and those who care about them. ["Recommended as a first purchase for school and public libraries. Hand this to readers looking to explore the somber and complex realities of life, especially responsibility, fractured relationships, and the butterfly effect of consequences": SLJ 1/17 review of the Crown book.]-Amanda Stern, Northwest Village School, Plainville, CT © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Depending on who--sorry, whom--you ask, I may have killed my three best friends. If you ask Blake Lloyd's grandma, Nana Betsy, I think she'd say no. That's because when she first saw me earlier today, she grabbed me in a huge, tearful hug and whispered in my ear: "You are not responsible for this, Carver Briggs. God knows it and so do I." And Nana Betsy tends to say what she thinks. So there's that. If you ask Eli Bauer's parents, Dr. Pierce Bauer and Dr. Melissa Rubin-Bauer, I expect they'd say maybe. When I saw them today, they each looked me in the eyes and shook my hand. In their faces, I saw more bereavement than anger. I sensed their desolation in the weakness of their handshakes. And I'm guessing part of their fatigue was over whether to hold me accountable in some way for their loss. So they go down as a maybe. Their daughter, Adair? Eli's twin? We used to be friends. Not like Eli and I were, but friends. I'd say she's a "definitely" from the way she glowers at me as if she wishes I'd been in the car too. She was doing just that a few minutes ago, while talking with some of our classmates attending the funeral. Then there's Judge Frederick Douglass Edwards and his ex-wife, Cynthia Edwards. If you ask them if I killed their son, Thurgood Marshall "Mars" Edwards, I expect you'd hear a firm "probably." When I saw Judge Edwards today, he towered over me, immaculately dressed as always. Neither of us spoke for a while. The air between us felt hard and rough as stone. "It's good to see you, sir," I said finally, and extended my sweating hand. "None of this is good," he said in his kingly voice, jaw muscles clenching, looking above me. Beyond me. As though he thought if he could persuade himself of my insignificance, he could persuade himself that I had nothing to do with his son's death. He shook my hand like it was both his duty and his only way of hurting me. Then there's me. I would tell you that I definitely killed my three best friends. Not on purpose. I'm pretty sure no one thinks I did it on purpose; that I slipped under their car in the dead of night and severed the brake lines. No, here's the cruel irony for the writer I am: I wrote them out of existence. Where are you guys? Text me back. Not a particularly good or creative text message. But they found Mars's phone (Mars was driving) with a half-composed text responding to me, just as I requested. It looks like that was what he was working on when he slammed into the rear of a stopped semi on the highway at almost seventy miles per hour. The car went under the trailer, shearing off the top. Am I certain that it was my text message that set into motion the chain of events that culminated in my friends' deaths? No. But I'm sure enough. I'm numb. Blank. Not yet in the throes of the blazing, ringing pain I'm certain waits for me in the unrolling days ahead. It's like once when I was chopping onions to help my mom in the kitchen. The knife slipped and I sliced open my hand. There was this pause in my brain as if my body needed to figure out it had been cut. I knew two things right then: (1) I felt only a quick strike and a dull throbbing. But the pain was coming. Oh, was it coming. And (2) I knew that in a second or two, I was about to start raining blood all over my mom's favorite bamboo cutting board (yes, people can form deep emotional attachments to cutting boards; no, I don't get it so don't ask). So I sit at Blake Lloyd's funeral and wait for the pain. I wait to start bleeding all over everything. Excerpted from Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
