FREE BIRD

Predictable debut in which an attorney turned soul musician who blames himself for the tragic accident that killed his wife and young son hits the road in search of—yes—his soul. Clay Forester is living with his mother and stepfather in Robbinsville, North Carolina, singing cover tunes in redneck bars with a down-and-out childhood buddy and dating his high-school girlfriend when he learns that his father, long thought dead, really is—but only since yesterday. When his father’s antique 1961 Triumph miraculously purrs to life, Forester reluctantly understands that he is destined to make a pilgrimage to Santa Fe for the funeral of the man who abandoned him as a toddler. We are given this interminable road trip down to the last detail, including every Orbison song Forester croons to pass the time and every gaseous excretion made by Buster, a dog he picks up along the way. Of course Forester meets many people on his travels and learns something about love and loss from each of them, but even these lessons become particularly heavy-handed when our modern Odysseus passes through Shamrock, Texas, and bumps into Father Tom, a Jesuit from his law school days, who assures Forester that “Forgiveness is easier than hatred in the long run.”

Flashbacks to Forester’s marriage are compelling, but they get lost in the overwritten and overemotional drama of the whole.