Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey
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Beth is a spirited woman with mental retardation, who spends nearly every day riding the buses in Philadelphia. The drivers, a lively group, are her mentors; her fellow passengers are her community. When Beth asks her sister Rachel to accompany her on the buses for one year, they take a transcendent journey together that changes Rachel's life in incredible ways and leads her to accept her sister at long last-teaching her to slow down and enjoy the ride. Full of life lessons from which any reader will profit, Riding the Bus with My Sister is "a heartwarming, life-affirming journey through both the present and the past...[that] might just change your life" (Boston Herald). Publishers Weekly This perceptive, uplifting chronicle shows how much Simon, a creative writing professor at Bryn Mawr College, had to learn from her mentally retarded sister, Beth, about life, love and happiness. Beth lives independently and is in a long-term romantic relationship, but perhaps the most surprising thing about her, certainly to her (mostly) supportive family, is how she spends her days riding buses. Six days a week (the buses don't run on Sundays in her unnamed Pennsylvania city), all day, she cruises around, chatting up her favorite drivers, dispensing advice and holding her ground against those who find her a nuisance. Rachel joined Beth on her rides for a year, a few days every two weeks, in an attempt to mend their distanced relationship and gain some insight into Beth's daily life. She wound up learning a great deal about herself and how narrowly she'd been seeing the world. Beth's community within the transit system is a much stronger network than the one Rachel has in her hectic world, and some of the portraits of drivers and the other people in Beth's life are unforgettable. Rachel juxtaposes this with the story of their childhood, including the dissolution of their parents' marriage and the devastating abandonment by their mother, the effect of which is tied poignantly to the sisters' present relationship. Although she is honest about the frustrations of relating to her stubborn sister, Rachel comes to a new appreciation of her, and it is a pleasure for readers to share in that discovery. Agent, Anne Edelstein. (Aug. 26) Forecast: A blurb from Rosie O'Donnell and an author tour should pique women readers' interest. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
ContentsJanuary The Journey 1 The Time of Snows and Sorrow 21February Hitting the Road 27 The Professor 31 Fighting 42March The Pilgrim 49 Streetwise 58 Into Out There 67April The Dreamer 81 The Drivers’ Room 88 The End of Play 96May Lunch with Jesse 107 Matchmaker 123 The Pursuit of Happiness 127June The Earth Mother 133 Disabilities 141 Goodbye 152July The Optimist 157 Break Shot 168 Gone 171August The Loner 175 Nowhere 189 Be Not Afraid 190 Inside the Tears 195September The Jester 201 Surgery 209 Releasing the Rebel 216October The Hunk 225 The Price of Being Human 233 Come Home, Little Girl 238November The Girlfriend 247 The Eighteenth Hole 252December Swans and Witches 265 Finding the Twin 272 Iz Gonna Be All Right 275January Beyond the Limits of the Sky 279A Year and a Half Later The Miracle Maker 291
