Why I Fight

Categories: Teen Books , Fiction

J. Adams Oaks’ Why I Fight is a teen novel, but it’s one that adults will find moving, too. It’s one of those stories about a young person where the difference between what the narrator understands and what the reader knows is a gaping chasm. Adult readers will find themselves on the right side of the gulf to recognize fully the story’s ironies and heartbreaks.

Wyatt Reaves starts the novel as a twelve year old, a big husky kid who is always mistaken for older. His Uncle Spade busts him out of a social worker’s office while his parents are screaming in the hallway, and they hit the road.

Life in the car and at his uncle’s various girlfriends’ houses seems pretty good to Wyatt, once his stomach settles down. And it all seems even better once Uncle Spade discovers something that Wyatt is really good at—bare knuckle fighting.

It’s tragic, of course. But it takes years for Wyatt to see how he is being used and begin to rebel against his uncle. His return home at eighteen isn’t much of a homecoming, either, though, and the reader finally learns why he was homeless in the first place.

An easy read that’s not an easy read at all.