August, a high school science teacher is in the repair shop with his vehicle. He is talking to Wes, as he repairs his vehicle. August explains to Wes that he will not be able to go to Yellowstone as he planned this year because of the cost of the repairs. It is very important that August make it to Yellowstone this year. Wes comes up with a plan and says he will not charge him at all for the repairs if August takes his two sons, Seth age 12 and Henry age 7 on the trip with him. August is inclined to say no, but finds himself saying yes. So the adventure begins and the reader finds out why Wes asked August to take his sons. The boys really bond with August and it becomes the best summer of their lives. ( )

OMGGGGGGGG how good was that book????? I loved it! The characters, August, Seth & Henry, the dialogue, the messages & words of wisdom. The dog, Woody. The camping, the hiking, the climbing. There were parts where I cried my eyes out. Didn't know the author wrote Pay it Forward, too. Saw the movie, haven't read the book. ( )

August Schroeder is on his way to Yosemite. He is taking a trip he had planned with his son, Philip, but Philip is not along for the trip because he was killed in a traffic accident. When his car breaks down in a town along the way, he is persuaded to take two young boys (12 and 7), Seth and Henry, along with him on his summer trip. It is a fortuitous trip for both August and the boys, and it changes them in ways they cannot anticipate. They all need saving, and they save each other, and it is the building of their relationships and the influences they exert upon one another that make this a poignant and meaningful story.

This is my second Hyde book and I liked this one even more than the first. Hyde has a way of telling a story that makes you just relax into it and go along on the journey. You feel that you are always moving toward something important, something that matters not only to the characters but to all of us. I cried and laughed during this read, and I felt at the end that August and Seth and Henry were all made of flesh and blood and that I knew them well. ( )

On his way to Yosemite with the ashes of his deceased son and his small dog, August Schroeder's motor home breaks down and the mechanic asks him to take his two young sons along since he has to serve a 90-day sentence in jail. One son (Seth, age 12) is curious and talkative, and the other (Henry, age 7) has not spoken since running away from a home for abandoned children while his father served his last sentence. Turns out that the mechanic has a drinking problem, but August agrees and they head off on a wonderful trip of discovery as the boys have never left home. They learn about each other, and it is eventually revealed that the father is actually in jail for 180 days so August is going to help more than expected. Slowly, the pain of the boys is revealed as Seth attends an AA meeting with August and we learn of August's pain too. The father gets early release with an ankle monitor, Seth/Henry go home and with August's help, attempt an intervention. Sadly, there is little contact until August develops muscular dystrophy eight years later, and Seth/Henry decide they need to relive old times. Seth has become a top rock climber and August fears for him. Meanwhile Henry does not tell his father exactly where is he going, but he figures it out. Moving story, with great characters. 4.5 stars. ( )

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Take Me with You (2014) reminds me very much of her When I Found You, a novel I read back in 2008. In both instances, a man has his life turned upside down by children who randomly come into his life. In Take Me with You, the main character encounters the two young sons of the small-town mechanic he’s hired to get his travel rig back on the road, and in When I Found You, a man finds a small baby that’s been abandoned in a field he is walking across on his way to hunt ducks. In both novels, the men have to deal with unreliable relatives of the children who resent the long term relationships that will develop between the men and the children. It should be noted, however, that Take Me with You does have a much more positive tone and ending than When I Found You.

August, a high school science teacher on a tight travel budget, is on his way to Yellowstone National Park when his rig breaks down in a small California town, and now it appears that the repair costs are going to eat up all of his allocated gas money and then some. For very personal reasons, August is desperate to get to Yellowstone, but now it looks as if he is going to have to try again next year. And then it happens: the mechanic, who is about to begin a 90-day DUI jail sentence, offers to do the repairs for free if only August will take his two boys along with him and keep them until school starts again in September. August knows there are all kinds of reasons that he can’t — and shouldn’t — even seriously consider what the man is asking him to do. But when he drives away, the boys are with him.

On the road, August learns that the boys, aged 12 and 7, have been emotionally damaged by living alone for the past few years with their alcoholic father. In their own way, the boys are as damaged and fragile as August, himself a recovering alcoholic and newly divorced, knows himself to be. An entire summer of life on the road together will not be easy for any of them, but it will end up being the defining moment in each of their lives despite their reluctance to admit it to themselves or, most difficultly, to each other.

Bottom Line: Take Me with You strikes me as a novel whose message is that life is only made more difficult, and more precious time wasted, when good people fail to communicate with each other out of a misplaced fear of offending each other. This is, in effect, as much a coming of age novel for August as it is for the two boys for whom he suddenly finds himself totally responsible. Hyde tells a good, satisfying store here despite the fact that I found myself sometimes wishing I could shake a couple of the main characters by the shoulder and tell them to just get on with it. ( )