The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving
By Jonathan Evison 
(Algonquin Books)

Who among us wouldn’t like to put the car in reverse, hurtling back past some long-vanished stretch where we somehow swerved from the road, forever changing life’s scenery through all the miles to come?

Benjamin Benjamin, the 39-year-old narrator of Jonathan Evison’s “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving,” knows the feeling. As Evison’s novel opens, Ben has endured two rocky years reliving an accident ― which may have been his fault ― that killed his kids, ended his marriage, cost him his house and left him contemplating suicide.

Did I mention that “Caregiving” can be really funny?

Much of the humor and heart in Evison’s story arrive courtesy of the low-paying job that saves Ben ― returning to the workplace after a decade as a stay-at-home dad ― from himself: Having taken a night course on rudimentary caregiving, he lands an assignment attending 19-year-old Trevor Conklin, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

“Trev may not see twenty-five,” Ben tells us of his wheelchair-bound charge, whose rigid and contorted limbs remind Ben of a pretzel. “At twenty, he’s aging in reverse,” Ben continues. “It’s only a matter of time before he’s helpless as an infant once more, and slicing his waffles into thirty-six pieces will no longer be enough.”

“And yet,” Ben asks, “what choice does he have but to mark the time?”

Good question ― one applicable to both Ben and the first third of Evison’s novel, which chronicles our hero’s fogbound life of false starts and blind alleys, involving broad characters and thin subplots. Like Ben’s car, which “stalls at every intersection,” this early portion of “Caregiving” seems stuck ― wanting to move forward but unable to shift into drive.

Then Ben and Trev hit the road, and “Caregiving” takes off with them.

The ostensible reason for their trek across the Pacific Northwest is a visit to Trev’s cartoonish dad ― one of several men in “Caregiving” who counterpoint Ben’s own reflections on being a father. But like all road novels, the real point of this excellent adventure is the trip itself.

Before our duo reach the end of the trail, they’ll be a foursome, joined by a teenage runaway and a pregnant young woman.

While “Caregiving” often pulls toward farce, Evison is too kind to be cruel, and even his least likable characters benefit from his warmhearted generosity. Similarly, Evison’s sharp humor ensures that when the story drifts too far the other way ― resembling a greeting card and flirting with bathos ― a few quick wisecracks can often restore tonal balance.

As Ben and Trev continue their “oft-delayed, endlessly diverted voyage” ― an obvious metaphor for Ben’s own journey of self-discovery ― Ben frequently turns to his past, in a series of short switchbacks that recall another road trip where the destination was the Grand Canyon and his three fellow travelers were his pregnant wife, young daughter and future son.

That dialogue between past and present ― played out against the backdrop of an American West that embodies all our blue-sky hopes and the ways they’ve been tarnished ― recalls the similar conversation in Evison’s sprawling “West of Here” (2011), in which the Olympic Peninsula’s bright-eyed pioneers share a crowded stage with their worn-down descendants.

What Ben learns from his reflections on things past is that at some point one must move on.

He and his fellow road warriors may be trailed for hundreds of miles by a MacGuffin masking as a Skylark. But as Ben comes to realize, that’s no excuse for spending one’s life looking through the rearview mirror ― peering at one’s frightened eyes and living in the past rather than focusing on those sharing the open road ahead. (MCT)