While Bridget and her family are modern-day nomads, traveling frequently from place to place and living in a trailer, her life entails harsh rules. In “See You Down The Road” by Kim Ablon Whitney, the Daugherty’s group of Travelers, as these nomadic people are called, have various unique customs including dropping out of school, overwhelming virginity expectations for brides, and arranged marriages. Travelers scam off of the Country people, those who are not nomadic, for their livings. Bridget is unsatisfied with her Traveler’s lifestyle. She wonders what life would be like living in one place. She develops a love for learning and reading. She explains her passion for reading in the quote, “I loved to read—something everyone else thought was just plain strange—but more than anything I loved reading true stories” (pg. 9). However, her adoration for school becomes a dilemma since her family is constantly traveling and they need her to help make money. The Daughertys’ family friends’ son, Patrick Murphy, is being arranged to marry Bridget. She thinks Patrick is cute, but his night adventures with her older brother Jimmy, disappoint her greatly. Overheard conversations of their ventures lead Bridget to resenting her assumption that she must be a virgin bride. The entire thought of marriage begins to scare her. Bridget and her friend, Ann, fool Country people and steal their money. Although as Traveler people this behavior was accepted, Bridget feels guilty. She regrets these traditions and feels as though she’ll bypass once in a lifetime opportunities. However, she engages in a scam with Patrick, Jimmy, and her uncle. Will she be determined enough to stay with her family? In this wonderfully written novel portraying life on the road, Bridget is constantly questioning what family truly means
I thoroughly enjoyed “See You Down The Road” by Kim Ablon Whitney. It depicts the importance of culture as well as its pros and cons. I could relate to Bridget various times throughout the duration of the novel, and that aided my understanding of her character. Whitney amazingly illustrates the life of Irish Traveler’s in America and vividly describes the small nomadic life. The quote, “He also worried that no self-respecting Traveler boy would want to marry a girl with more education than him,” (pg. 8) shows how Bridget’s parents played a major role in her love life. Her dad, for example, gave her his opinion on how he didn’t think Patrick would agree to marrying her because she had a better education. This supports my opinion because arranged marriages are a theme in “See You Down The Road.” However, I thought the clues to Mrs. Daugherty’s mystery caller would have added to the puzzle and given the reader the chance to try to solve the complication, but it didn’t. I also thought the conclusion to be haste and insufficient. Had Whitney included more and tied the ending together, I think I would have enjoyed it even more. -E.P.

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce for TeensReadToo.com

Bridget and her family are Travelers. They're a little-known group of people in America who travel around the country, making money in usually illegal ways, and keep to themselves, with their own traditions and way of life. People who aren't Travelers are called Country, and Travelers usually isolate themselves from these people. They don't trust them, and only interact with them to scam money off of them. Travelers only go to Country schools for a few years, just long enough to know what they need to.

Bridget is a little different from many Travelers in that way. She works Country jobs, as a cashier, and she's been going to Country schools years longer than most other Traveler teenagers. Still, though, she keeps to the Traveler way most of the time. She and her friend, Ann, make their money by ripping off the local K-mart in whatever town they're in. Her parents have arranged a marriage for her, with Ann's brother, Patrick. Her brother, Jimmy, has grown up helping their father fix driveways and roofs with watered-down sealant to make a better profit by scamming Country people.

Bridget doesn't always like her life as a Traveler. She isn't sure she wants to marry Patrick, even though he's a nice guy and she does like him, but she's never see any way out of it. Then her uncle, Big Jim, takes Bridget, Jimmy, and Patrick with him all the way to Arizona, where they'll pull off the biggest scam that Bridget's ever been involved in. They'll sell condos that don't meet the building codes, and then run off with the money. The beauty of it is, the contractor won't dare tell on them, as he's the one who hired them to sell condos that don't meet building codes.

In Arizona, Bridget has some time to think about a lot of things, and maybe even figure out what she wants. But then she makes a discovery about her family, one that could change everything for Bridget...The choice is hers, but what will she decide?

Before reading SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD, I had never heard of Travelers. I don't think many people have, but they're real people, and reading about them was very interesting. Their way of life is very different from the way most of us live, and this is an eye-opening book. Many of us don't realize how differently some people live from us, not just in far away places but right here in the United States.

On top of that, SEE YOU DOWN THE ROAD is full of amazing characters, and is very well written. All of the characters are well-drawn, realistic, and three-dimensional; even the very minor characters seem alive. The ending is not what we might expect from this sort of book, but it fits well, and is one that I really liked. It wasn't predictable, and it was still a happy ending. Whitney's ending, I felt, stayed true to the characters and flowed with the rest of the story wonderfully. ( )

Adult material - 9th grade and up
Travelers
Promised marriage
Finding herself
16 yrs old ( )