A quick read, but a powerful story to be told. Bravo to the grandfather that never failed at loving his grandson and for looking beyond his addiction. The search for answers and understanding why some kids leave home and take up train hopping. Why they give up the comfort of their home and family to wrestle with demons on the road whether it be drugs or alcohol? The kids describe it as freedom from responsibility, broken families, failed educational system and search for happiness. My heart was torn for this grandfather’s retracing of his grandson.
Thanks NetGalley for the chance to read this book for a review. It did not disappoint but left me in tears and prayer for all the lost young souls searching for family outside the home.

This was harrowing to read. Leave Out the Tragic Parts is a grandfather's attempt to piece together what his grandson's life on the road was like, including letters and accounts from other travelers, which were really interesting to read.

The author’s grandson, Jared, aka Goblin, lived quite the life, hopping trains, seeing the country, meeting friends who became family, and enjoying life. However, Jared was suffering from life-threatening alcohol dependency and was unable to see a future for himself other than the early death that eventually found him. Was Jared truly only happy on the road, or was that life forced upon him by his addiction?

While an incredibly sad book, it was full of love for family and for life.

A heartbreaking story of a grandson's struggle with alcoholism. I enjoyed how this book was written; using accounts from the people Jared traveled with on the road. Kindred's love for his grandson is obvious and it was nice to see how the family was always trying to support Jared through his addiction. The story did feel a little disjointed at times and sometimes felt like if you were an insider to this family the story would make more sense or flow better.
*I received this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

This book was really intriguing, however it could use some decent editing. The story was very captivating.

I started this book, but couldn't get into it. Sadly, I never finished the book. I will not be reviewing this book for Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

I thought this was a really poignant memoir, at times hard to read, but an important story. You can sense the grandfather's deep love for his grandson. I use 5 stars for a book I would hands-down re-read. So while I don't rate this 5 stars (b/c I don't plan to re-read it), I would recommend it to others.

Powerful memoir that reminds us that each person has their own story, even while living on the same journey. Dave Kindred’s painful, raw, and heartbreaking retelling of his search to understand his grandson’s pain pushes us to recognize that love is the most powerful emotion we have - and that it can be messy, confusing, and doesn’t guarantee happy endings. Read this book.

Such a heart breaking read, I knew this wouldn't be an easy one but wow. It really makes you feel a lot. For Jared, Jacob, and the whole family. It must be so hard to watch someone you love fall into addiction and take them away from you. I feel like I will be thinking of this book for awhile. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This is a poignant narrative of a grandfather who investigated the life and death of his grandson, Jared, who left home at eighteen to travel across the United States as a train-hopper. Kindred interviewed fellow “road dogs” to learn the full journey of his grandson and pay homage to him through this book.

Kindred’s immense love for Jared spills from the pages. However this book is also about loss, addiction, and family. Some passages are haunting depictions of a young man struggling with addiction and how it affected his loved ones. It also explores the culture of “travelin kids,” which I found particularly interesting.

My main critique is that the narrative flow is choppy, but that makes sense as Jared’s story is told by those who only spent chapters of life with him. It made it hard to attach to the story and the characters. I somewhat lost interest in some passages that felt repetitive.

Overall, this is a touching story about love and addiction that also illuminates experiences I haven’t seen in books before.

I ljust bed this book. I love learning and reading about other people’s lives. Dave sure has come along way. Way to go. Awesome book!

Dave Kindred is a sportswriter who introduces himself in the beginning of the book as someone who was a father, but who thought of himself as never having paid enough attention to his son as the son grew up. Therefore, when Kindred became a grandfather to twin grandsons, he vowed to be a good grandfather, involved, loving, compassionate. He was that to the best of his ability.
There are reminiscences of the twins’ growing up, sometimes living nearby their grandparents, and of good times spent together. The love between the twins Jared and Jacob and their grandfather was never in doubt.
Jared left home at 18 to explore the world, and became a traveling kid, hopping freight trains, drinking, panhandling but happily making friends and seeing the world, just not the world most people usually see or live in. Jared’s world contained people named Stray, Feral, Booze Cop, other young people who swam in dirty rivers, traveled dangerously on freight cars, and spent nights drinking vodka, eating whatever they could find, and sleeping in parks. To the average person, it’s very sad, but to those who live and love what they consider freedom, it’s not sad at all.
Jared, who becomes Goblin, was loved by family, but he couldn’t accept the restrictions of that love. He was happy on his self destructive path, spiraling farther into addiction, until Goblin was gone.
The author was intent on finding people who knew and had traveled and lived with his grandson, and interviewed them to get a handle on the traveling kids’ life and mindset. In one sense it’s shocking to know there are literally children on their own who learn to live in the dirtiest dregs of society when they have such promise. And in another sense, it amazing to know they the traveling kids form a bond, and how they look out for each other, share, care, and have values that Would be so positive in another setting.
The stories are heartbreaking, sometimes humorous, colorful, and tragic all at once.
Any family who has dealt with someone with addiction will relate to the author, who tries to help, believes in recovery, and whose heart is broken when the help is not enough. This true story is about love and loss, and is beautifully written despite the pain and heartbreak the author shares.
This is my unbiased review after receiving a gratis copy of the book through Netgalley.

This book was an amazing story of a grandfather’s extraordinary investigation after the death of his grandson. Kindred dug deep to try and understand his grandson’s choice of lifestyle. How and why did this happen. Jared left home at 18 and lived on the streets and traveled the world via trains. Known to others in the “traveling kids” world as “Goblin” Jared became totally immersed in this culture. In this lifestyle Jared quickly became addicted to alcohol and went to great lengths to maintain an intoxicated state even when detrimental to his health.
The author’s quest to try and retrace his grandsons life lead to reflection on his own life and relationship with his son and his with his father. It is a heartfelt look at the the choices made and the course those choices yield.
While the ending was not a happy one I appreciated the lengths the author went to try and really understand and yet embrace his grandson’s unconventional lifestyle choice.
While the subject matter of this book was not something I would normally read the author did a fantastic job of explaining a sub culture that I was not aware of. It was also a hard look at the devastating affects of chronic alcoholism.
I highly recommend this book!!!

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

"Leave Out the Tragic Parts" by Dave Kindred is a book about the author's search for the events leading to his grandson Jared's death from addiction. This book highlights the way that addiction takes hold of the addict and the family's will to keep believing that their loved ones will get better. In this case, Jared's family never stopped believing that he could follow a different path despite never getting treatment for this terrible disease. Jared's relationship with his parents was always challenging, but his grandparents loved him with every inch of their souls. I did find the writing to be a little bit choppy and the interviews with Jared's friends and the descriptions of the train hopping lifestyle of which Jared was a part to be a little bit dull. Also, the tales of Jared's run-ins with police while panhandling, public intoxication, and trespassing would likely be handled differently if he did not have the privilege of being white. Hopefully, this book will lead to a greater understanding of how addictions start and how they manifest over time.

This challenged some of my stereotypes about young people on the road. I generally assume that people who abuse drugs and/or alcohol are self-medicating for something—often things like depression, bipolar disorder, or PTSD. I also assume kids on the road are running away from some type of physical abuse.

This memoir is written by a grandfather whose grandson hit the road at age 18 and drank himself to death a mere six years later. Jared who became Goblin was the fraternal twin of Jacob. Their parents had a very nasty divorce and the twins were moved around a far amount until they were separated, one brother staying with his father and the new wife and stepsiblings, the other with his mother. By all accounts both brothers were loved, and obviously the vast majority of kids of divorce don’t feel the need to constantly drink bottom shelf vodka and travel the country by train. The other stereotype that Jared didn’t fit was that by all accounts he’s a happy human being who genuinely cares about others.

The grandfather, who spent his life working as a sports reporter, used his journalistic skills to track down the kids Jared traveled with to come to some understanding of what the heck happened. One of the young women he interviewed commented that most addicts put their addiction above everything and everyone else, but Jared always looked out for his friends.

I teared up several times during this story. You aren’t surprised when someone who abuses illegal drugs dies young from an overdose or something wrong with the drugs they were sold, but alcohol usually takes a long time to kill you. At a young age Jared was experiencing DTs (delirium tremens) and several health issues from the combination of alcohol abuse and life on the road, leading to numerous hospital visits. Another side effect of abusing alcohol and then not having access to it is having seizures. That’s part of the reason Jared always needed alcohol on hand, so he wouldn’t go through the dark, sometimes medically dangerous process of withdrawal.

This is not a fun book, but it’s a story of love and family, including the family you find that aren’t genetically related to you.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this memoir, which RELEASES FEBRUARY 2, 2020.

This is a tough one to review. Dave Kindred's love for his grandson is palpable as he tries to capture Jared's fleeting, transient, ultimately fully-unknowable life through conversations, letters and texts with the various "travelin kids." His sadness at Jared's death and too-late awakening to the realities of alcoholism and addiction are heartbreaking.

That being said...This book was all telling and no showing. Everything is laid out in either long quotes of these conversations and letters, or Kindred's attempt at interpreting and weaving them together into bits and pieces of a life. Because of that, everything seems like a weird inside joke that we're on the outside of (we never get actual explanations for the seemingly significant aspects of the travelin kids life, like their nicknames or tattoos or how they choose their "families") and the people come off as goofy caricatures with "stinking" clothes, ridiculous nicknames and silly language. This story would've had so much more impact if Kindred had really put us there, in their shoes.

Additionally, this family (like many) seems to suffer from a genetic predisposition for selfishness and complete lack of self-awareness. Kindred TWICE forced his son and family to move to another state to live LITERALLY next door to them - not because of the son, but because he wanted to be around the grandsons! - and then felt offended when that didn't work out?! He says again and again throughout the book that he didn't really give a crap when his son was born or was growing up, but just loved the grandsons sooooo much. Uh, wow. Then the son, Jared's dad, splits up his twin sons and kicks Jared out of the house because the new stepmom didn't want to deal with him! Guess what dude, that's not how parenting works. These people do not seem to understand that once you have a child, your right to be selfish is DONE. OVER. Children depend on their parents for everything - you don't get to ignore that because you feel like it. No wonder Jared took off to find a "family" of his choosing.

And then there's the aspect of Jared's alcoholism and his family's complete enabling of it - never any consequences, always sending money, always opening their homes, always skirting around a real conversation, and always paying his hospital bills (I assume? Unless the dozen hospital visits were just walked away from scot free?). I'm glad that Kindred finally did some research into addiction and learned some realities, but it's unfortunate that it came too late for the family to really help Jared. I know I'm not in their shoes, and I feel conflicted about even saying this stuff as it's not my situation, but as an outsider reading the story, it's just SO OBVIOUS. It's just so unnecessary and stupid and sad.

On January 14, 2014, Jared Glenn Kindred, known among 'travelin' kids' as Goblin, died -- a casualty of addiction. For five years, Goblin rode the rails, slept on sidewalks and under bridges, seeing everywhere and nowhere as his home. This is his story, as painstakingly reconstructed by his grandfather and Goblin's 'road dogs.' As such, it is a love story – an effort to make visible the life of a homeless young man who lived outside the confines of a world that most of us know. But it is also a story of addiction, of missed opportunities to intervene, and of lost chances to change.

Haunting and beautifully written, it is reminder of the importance of early intervention because love alone is not enough to save someone in the throes of addiction and denial can kill.

This book is a deep dive into the life and early death of sportswriter Dave Kindred’s grandson Jared. In an attempt to understand his grandson’s journey with addiction, Dave digs into the on-the-road subculture of alcohol, freight-train travel and squatting which consumed Jared/Goblin. Dave introduces Goblin’s fellow travelers with empathy and compassion.. My sister lost her 20-year battle with addiction in 2011, I am drawn to books about losing family members to addiction. This book is written with kindness, curiosity and love.

This is a story of a grandfather in search of his grandson with the love that he has for him. It is beautifully written and a must read for those who have addiction in their lives. Although this was not an easy read as I have worked with many families who have faced addiction, it was well worth it the read.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Not sure what I expected from this novel but it was a heartfelt read about a grandfather trying to connect to a wayward grandson. Overall, it was an honest and emotional journey. The book as a whole felt like a pursuit of closure for the author, in the hopes of further understanding his grandson and his life choices. As such, some moments felt deeply personal but at times could be tedious for an outside reader.

When I first started reading this book I found it very interesting. By the time I finished reading it my heart went out to Jacob. Anyone who has a problem such as this book description needs to know that help available.