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There are currently 42 member reviews
for The Sunset Route
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Dan W. (Fort Myers, FL)
Adventures Abound
Carrot Quinn's book provides a vivid in-site to an adventurous life that most people would not even consider. Her risks and dangers would pale in comparison to what most adolescent girls would ever encounter. Quinn's memoir revolves around her self-discovery of herself and a determination to rid herself of the physical and mental abuse she experienced earlier in her life and the decision to seek the freedom to emerge from an devastating life with no future she sees in Alaska. This book should be a recommendation to any book club that is seeking to offer its participants an "arm chair" adventure!
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Susan U. (Waukesha, WI)
Survival and hope
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read and comment on this memoir. It is well written, moves along smoothly and kept me engaged. The back and forth between timelines worked perfectly. After all Carrot has experienced it's amazing that she has survived and has a positive, move forward attitude. She openly shares her life of abuse, neglect, loneliness, hunger, and rejection while giving us a picture of life on the rails and her ability to forgive and move forward. It is inspiring and I absolutely recommend it.
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Elizabeth V. (Bellbrook, OH)
What a Trip!
Once I started reading, I could not put "The Sunset Route" down until the last page. The details about riding the rails were both fascinating and terrifying. The hardships Carrot overcame, described in such a matter-of-fact tone, were stunning to read. I mourned the necessity of the lessons she learned about how to take care of herself from such a very young age and cheered the resilience she showed in the face of overwhelming obstacles. She is a very inspiring person and her story is one that I think many young people will find very relatable. It was a very strong lesson in how easy it is for someone to slip through the cracks in our society. I hope it will make me more aware of the people around me who may be in a similar situation.
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Amy (Boulder City, NV)
Beautiful & Heartbreaking
How can a book be so beautifully written when the topics are dark, gritty, & heartbreaking? Carrot Quinn has managed to write a poetic memoir, with her horrendous experiences so well described, I could visualize the scenery, feel her pain and discomfort, and be awed by her determination. This memoir covers so many topics: poverty, mental illness, child abuse, abandonment, risk-taking, resilience, faith & conviction just to name a few. This book has sparked a reminder that everyone's life is a journey, with some difficult roads to travel, but there is beauty and wonder to be found all around us if we can just keep going on. A very inspiring reading experience that will stay with me for a long time.
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Sonya M. (Takoma Park, MD)
On the Road, The Sunset Route
The Sunset Route, by Carrot Quinn is excellent, a beautifully written page-turner. For anyone who likes memoirs or travel stories, this is highly recommended. I tend to be skeptical of memoirs, but Quinn's stories were believable. Moving between the early 1990s when the author is a small child to her early adulthood. Quinn and her brother are raised by their paranoid schizophrenic mother in Anchorage Alaska. The author takes us on a journey by train and road from Colorado to Alaska, to Oregon and from North Carolina to California, The Sunset Route.
Carrot Quinn's childhood was spent in near starvation as her mentally ill mother had no income except a welfare housing voucher. Her mother provided little for Quinn and her brother, frequently beating them while in the throes of her illness. At an early age, the children learned to dumpster dive for food, some days subsisting on donuts, and ketchup packets. Without cleaning products, they would arrive at school wearing dirty clothes and smelling. Dirty and starving, they became targets for bullying in school. Subsequently, missing a lot of school. Quinn leaves out much mention of any intervention. If anyone tried to help, they failed at last in Quinn's memory.
Eventually the brother and sister were sent to live with their grandparents in Colorado, but the unloving, abusive relationships drive the brother to the marines, and Quinn runs away at 14. Her early adult life was spent living in "punk houses" in the west. Group houses that were like communes or hostels. She and her friends rarely work or work only long enough to pay the rent. They eat by dumpster diving; and provide for themselves by shoplifting.
While Quinn's childhood is heartbreaking, her stories on the road are beautiful, adventurous travel tales. A showcase story of Quinn's resilience, she catches a ride with a lunatic driver up the Alaskan highway. In the wilderness, the car turns over stranding Quinn. Ever resourceful, she survives and begins to heal through nature and long-haul walking. I would imagine her writing heals her too. Carrot Quinn is certainly good at it.
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Barbara B. (Evansville, IN)
Excellent memoir
Forever, I will think of this book every time I see a freight train. But the more important theme is the way the author was treated by her parents when she was a child.
I have questions, many questions. How could her mother have custody of Carrot Quinn and her brother Jordan? Why does this family own items like a sewing machine and hundreds of cigarettes for the mother, when they cannot afford to buy food? How many other children are as neglected as these children? It is possible for memoirs to be embellished? Isn't it wonderful that Carrot Quinn can write such an intriguing memoir? She uses so many excellent metaphors in her writing.
The Sunset Route publishes this week. I think it's right up there with the memoir Educated. It's a gem of a memoir!
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Mary Lou C. (Shenadoah Junction, WV)
Sunset Route
A wonderfully well written story that grips your emotions with each page. Carrot shares her struggles to survive in a world that seems to reject her. She makes you feel her deepest emotions from this rejection and isolation. The tragedy of mental illness and how it can change and destroy people and families is heartbreaking. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and her story gave me a whole new understanding of those unfortunate souls I saw on the streets of Portland and near the railyards, as well as the backpacking hitchhikers I've seen all over the country, who are struggling and homeless. This is a scene repeated all over the country. It helps you realize just how many people are "lost" out there. The strength of this woman, to continue on through the depths of despair and come out the other side is so inspiring. She was able to maintain a positive attitude and eventually accept and forgive those who rejected her. It reminded me a little of "The Glass Castle", which remains one of my all-time favorites. I recommend this book highly.
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