Uplifting tale of music, families, and a road trip

This book far exceeded my expectations. That doesn't mean I expected it to be bad or even mediocre but it turned out to be one of the better books I've read in the last couple of years.

Miriam Tedesco lost her husband and her twin teen children in an horrific auto accident a year ago and she still hasn't gone very far on the path to recovering from this tremendous loss.

She finds a video message on her daughter's laptop that her twin daughter and son left for her thinking that her and her husband were going to soon be empty-nesters and challenging them to a flip-the-coin road trip. And Miriam decides to take this trip by herself, in memory of her family.

I loved Miriam and her insecurities and the questions she raises as she travels cross country on her trip. And there are more characters that I love but I won't post any spoilers.

This is a touching story about loss, grief, love in many different forms, friendships, and more. I highly recommend this book.

I received this book from Alcove Press through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

I loved this book. It is a women’s journey to forgive herself after the loss of her family. It is the story of Miriam who a year after her family’s tragic death is still unable to move on with her life. Finding an app on her computer that her children had developed for a trip they wanted their parents to go on, she decides to go on her own. While on the journey, Miriam finds a way to forgive herself, reveal information from the past and how to love again while finding herself. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I’m wiping tears from my eyes as I’m writing this review.
I loved every word of this powerful, moving story.

Miriam lost her husband and children in a car accident a year ago. She’s still grieving and having a hard time moving on. Miriam discovers an app that her teenagers created with the intention to send their parents on a road trip. She decides to take the trip by herself. Following Miriam through obscure landmarks and meeting a spunky pregnant hitchhiker, Dicey.

This book answers the question do we deserve to be happy again after trauma? Do you have the strength to carry on? This is such a moving book about a women facing her grief and finding the courage to move on.

Thanks to NetGalley and the author for my gifted copy.

Miriam is mired in her grief- understandable- and burdened by a secret when she decides that the best way to find herself again is to take the road trip her kids planned for her before they, along with her husband Two, were killed by a drunk driver,. They were a family of musicians so she packs the cello and guitar in the car and sets off. Her decision to give Dicey, who is pregnant, a lift changes everything. Dicey has her own issues. No spoilers from me but these two find a way back to life as they travel across the US, with Miriam playing music along the way. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. It's an emotional read about grief, forgiveness, and resilience.

Poignant, hopeful, lyrical, captivating

This novel touched me more than most have in years. The depth and sensitive handling of the subject matter around continuing life despite unspeakable grief and the book's lyrical beauty took my breath away. I admire the skill Kathleen Basi demonstrates in taking a topic that could be simply heart-breaking and making it poignant, witty, and hopeful.

This novel could be described as a road trip story but it’s so very much more. What it’s about is the question of how we continue after the unimaginable happens?

The story opens a year after Miriam Tedesco has lost her entire family, when her husband and kids are killed in a car accident. A meltdown at work—a year to the day after she lost them— brings home that she is not coping well with her loss, including turning away from the refuge she could find in her beloved music.

I’ve never been a person who music runs in my blood and is as essential to my emotional health as breathing is to the physical, but through Miriam, I learned how that feels.

When Miriam discovers an app that her teenagers created with the intent to send their parents on a heads or tails (pick the direction) road trip across the country, it makes perfect sense that she decides to do the trip by herself. The change to her plan to stay isolated happens when she gives a ride to Dicey, a spunky pregnant hitch hiker with a secret, who will challenge Miriam to face every topic she’s avoided.

To me, this is a book about the moment when you have to decide, despite the trauma life has dealt you, whether you can ever find the strength to carry on, and believe you deserve to be happy again?

What else can I say? I could come up with something trite that it hits all the right notes, but it’s hard to do such a beautiful, lyrical, poignant, thoughtful, uplifting book justice. If I could give six stars out of five, I would.

Don’t miss this one!

The premise of this book appealed to me right away. The main character, Miriam Tedesco, sets off on a road trip to work through her grief after her husband and children are killed in an accident. Along the way, we learn more about Miriam's past and her relationship with her family as she's forced to confront unresolved issues.

Grief is a natural theme in this book, but guilt has a strong presence as well. Miriam carries a lot of guilt. Did she love her husband and children enough? Did she make the right decisions in her past? These questions haunt her through her journey, and the guilt is something that's very relatable.

I liked how music was an important part of the book, a thread that binds past and present and connects Miriam with many of the important people in her life. Miriam, her husband, and her children are all musicians, and Miriam's job is in a church choir, which also serves as her support system. She takes instruments with her, and they play an important part in her journey.

The cast of characters was relatively small, so the reader gets to really get to know the main characters. Miriam is very likeable but has the flaws and insecurities that make her seem like a real person. Through her memories, her children practically jump out of the pages as dynamic, talented teenager with passion and ambition. Dicey, the passenger that Miriam picks up, helps Miriam on her journey, but she has a backstory and burden of her own. I enjoyed their interactions and how they moved between serious and humorous.

Thanks to Alcove Press and Netgalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you pick up A Song for the Road you are in store for an emotional, at times funny, road trip across America with a grieving mother and widow and a young pregnant woman with secrets of her own. Miriam lost her husband and teenage twins one year ago in a devastating accident; a woman with strong ties to her music ministry at her church she is wrestling with complicated feelings and emotions beyond the untimely deaths of her family. When she opens her daughter's laptop and sees a trip the twins set up for her and her husband to take she spontaneously decides to go it solo. Grabbing both kids instruments and her husbands she sets out on this journey across America. In West Virginia she meets Dicey-a young pregnant woman who is going home to California-where Miriam's trip is supposed to end. The two women take the journey together and discover truths and healing along the way. A Song for the Road is a wonderful debut from Kathleen Basi. With well-developed characters, a smartly researched musical component and a fun approach to the American road trip-this is a debut not to be missed!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Tragedy and grief are unbiased. We are all affected, yet we each mourn within our own capacity. Our mourning could be from what has already happened or even about what is to come. We see both ways of mourning in the different characters, as well as healing within these pages. Miriam created strong feelings of dislike for me until close to the end when she redeemed herself. I related quite a bit with Dicey and loved her headstrong stubbornness. This story will stick with me for some time.

Thank you to Alcove Books, Kathleen Basi, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this story in exchange for an honest review.

In A Song for the Road, we meet Miriam: a church music director who lost her husband and two children in a car accident a year ago. Booting up her daughter’s laptop, she finds a computer program that her daughter had coded: a road trip app designed for Miriam and her husband to use while the kids were at summer camp. And so, she sets off on her Great American Adventure.

This book is a phenomenal read. On the surface it’s about dealing with grief, but underneath that it’s about how to love (again). It features great characters, and a well paced story. In a sense, this book really is like a road trip: you’re pretty sure of the destination the whole time, but it’s the journey that makes it a worthwhile endeavor. This book instantly skyrocketed up my list of favorites, and I’d recommend it to most people. However, because the main part of the story deals with her grief for her husband and children, I know that as a reader, you should probably be in the right headspace to read it.

My rating: 4.5/5 Stars - “Loved It” (Rounded up to 5 stars)

A version of this review will appear on Goodreads, my blog, and my Instagram, closer to the publication date.

A powerful, redeeming and fun book about a woman who loses her family in a horrific accident. In trying to clean out her daughters things, she comes across a road trip she had created for the family to take together. Of course Miriam decides to take that trip herself to honor her family. Miriam is left with survivor's guilt-Did she love her family enough. Along the way she picks up a pregnant young hitchhiker named Dicey who adds a necessary depth to the story. This was a compelling read that pulses with emotions........motherhood, grief, love, regrets and the power of music.
I would like to thank #netgalley, the author and #AlcovePress for the opportunity for read this ARC. Stunning debut that I won't soon forget.

I finished A Song for the Road about a week ago, and it’s stayed with me. I keep picking up my Kindle in the morning and still wanting Miriam and Dicey to be waiting for me.

The novel follows Miriam Tedesco as she takes a flip-a-coin road trip across the country one year after her husband and two teenaged children died in a car accident. Miriam is still raw and grieving at the start of the novel, but a chance encounter with a young pregnant woman, who ends up becoming Miriam’s road trip companion, soon shifts the mood. As the two women become closer their lives become irrevocably bound.

Miriam’s journey is at once unimaginable and completely relatable. Basi creates a character who wears what she perceives as flaws as armor. It’s hard to know Miriam—and at times to like her – until you (and she) are able to see beyond the grief to the giant, bleeding heart of the character.

I’m not a book cryer, but A Song for the Road had me dabbing my eyes and clutching my chest at the raw and poignant depictions Miriam’s grief.

A Song for the Road is a heartbreaking and life-affirming ode to family – both biological and found.

One year after the death of her husband and twin teenagers, Miriam has lost her faith and hope. Everything that mattered in her life is gone. With the help of her best friend, she begins to pick up the pieces of her life. She starts to clean out her famlily's possesions and she stumbles upon a travel program her daughter had created for her and her husband to go on as soon as they were empty nesters. She is determiend to take this trip for her children. As she embarks on this journey of loss, love, and learning, Miriam starts to find herself again.

This book was sad, tender, heartwarming, and emotional. It has an amazing premise, and I was drawn into the story instantly. At time I did find this hard to read because my biggest fear is loosing everyone in my family so if you do read this, make sure you are in the right head space to do so. I found this book to be well-written and I really enjoyed the characters. I am looking forward to the next book by this author!

I’ve regretted plenty of things in my life, and I’ve been crushed by the loss of loved ones, so when I saw this debut novel by author Kathleen Basi, I knew there was potential for a moving story. I was not disappointed. In fact, I was even more impressed than I had hoped.

Miriam, the main character, lives a life shaped by deep, relatable regrets. In particular, she wishes she had handled almost all of her relationships - with her husband, her daughter, her son, a past egotistical boyfriend, her mother - differently. While each wound and regret is different, they all ring completely true. And they are all so painful that I found it hard to “be by her side” (as a reader), carrying her regret along with her. It was truly heart-wrenching.


A surprising development starts her on a cross-country US road trip. The sites she visits were largely unknown to me, so I really enjoyed learning about them through Miriam’s eyes. She also quickly teams up with a companion, Dicey, and soon they find themselves needing each other in both practical and emotional ways. Dicey is quite charismatic, so their relationship lightens the deep sadness in Miriam’s life.

And the road trip does too. As they traverse the continent, Miriam moves across her own emotional terrain, ultimately figuring out the steps she must take to heal from the many regrets in her life. I like books that end with both a resolution of the protagonist's current issues AND a promise that her life will continue to grow. This novel delivers on both fronts.

This novel is sad, touching, fun, and sweet, by turns. I highly recommend it.

Poignant. Heartbreaking. Touching. Miriam's life stopped when her entire family was wiped out due to an accident. She discovers her daughter had set up the ultimate road trip for her prior to her death so Miriam decides to embark on a life changing journey. She faces her demons, makes new friends, and has dawning realizations about the family she lost ,but also about the family she still has. I liked Dicey a lot. She was spunky, determined, and the voice of reason to spur Miriam on. I also liked Teo because I think he was unappreciated by Miriam for most of their marriage. The ending was sweet, but I would have liked to have seen an epilogue, but then it's not my story,

This book made me cry, in the best ways. Right from the first chapter, I knew this novel would be a ride-- literally and emotionally. Miriam is a complicated main character in an impossible situation. After the death of her teenage twin children and her husband, she has to deal with the secrets she kept and the love she feels she hadn't given them. No spoilers, but the journey she is sent on is believable, beautiful, and heart-rending.

A thing I really appreciated about this novel in particular is how it talks about both the isolation and connection that comes with grief. I think many of us are grieving in one way or another, and Miriam's trip is a satisfying story of coming to grips with those lost opportunities and the roads we have to forge for ourselves after those we love have passed.

Recommended!

Imagine, if you can, the devastation of losing your entire family—husband and children, suddenly, unexpectedly to a drunken driver. Then add the guilt of believing you hadn’t loved them enough while they were with you. This is the situation of Miriam Tedesco when A Song for the Road opens.

When she discovers her children had planned a flip-a-coin cross-county road trip for her and her husband, Miriam decides to to take the trip on her own. She hopes when she arrives at the California beach her family had died trying to reach, she will find peace.

A Song for the Road is a great read. A poignant exploration of grief, full of sympathetic characters and interesting road stops.

I received an advance copy of this book for an honest review.

A powerful story that grabbed me from the very first few pages and pulled me along the entire journey. The book was emotionally impactful and truthful to the feelings of grief, regret, and loss. I love how the author wove music throughout the whole adventure. A truly satisfying read. Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A Song for the Road was definitely tear-jerking but had many moments of happiness and healing. I also appreciated the representation and the little mysteries that unfolded. Highly recommended.

A wonderful novel about a widow feeling guilty about whether she loved her lost family enough. If you’ve ever lost someone, you’ll be able to relate to the feeling that one could have done more, loved more, given more. And there’s another question to answer. Do you tell the man who fathered your children but had no idea he’d done so that they existed and are now dead? Great question for a book club to discuss. And there are many others here too. Highly recommended for Book clubs.
Miriam Tedesco’s decision to go on the road trip her children had planned for her helps her to answer these questions.

Many years ago, a friend of mine's sister lost her husband and two young children in a car accident, and I have always wondered how one heals from such a devastating tragedy. Basi offers a story that helps a reader work through that difficult journey. I was drawn to Miriam's guilt and self-recrimination and how she worked through it all in a road trip that offered redemption and self-forgiveness.