The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles - a review

The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles by Laura Fahrenthold

I agreed to review this book thinking it was the story of a family RVing across the United States. I got this impression from the blurbs and the happy cover picture. Because I’m a seasoned RVer who spent ten years camping all over North America, I was interested to hear about the family’s adventures.

However, this is not a travelogue. A relatively few pages are devoted to three RV trips the author made with her two young daughters.

This is a grief story, the story of a young mother who is blind sided by the death of her husband Mark, which sends her into a grieving state so overwhelming she becomes almost dysfunctional. She is unable to function at her job, pay her bills, remember or understand what people are saying to her as her mind continually obsesses over her loss. A therapist and a grief circle help but she still feels “a half person.”  Her husband’s ashes are in a box in the house and she talks to her husband through them. They give her comfort. She calls it “Mark in a Box.”

We do not start on the first journey until after a hundred pages discussing the death and her subsequent problems. At first she and her daughters tent but later change over to a more comfortable RV. She cannot bear to leave the ashes behind so she takes half of them along. Eventually Laura decides to sprinkle ashes at scenic places and other places that, in some way, connect to Mark. Her children join in this activity which comforts them all.

We hear very little about the scenery or attractions of the trip except in the context of the “sprinkling.” The threesome have a few RV adventures and some of them make this Canadian outdoors person cringe “Of course we ignored the weather forecast.” she writes. You get the idea.

On returning home, Laura once again becomes depressed. She changes houses and joins Match dot.com with hopes of finding a new love interest but is disappointed.  Eventually, the family takes another camping trip, this time touring Canada and still sprinkling ashes. Her emotions still rule her and she says “my life totally sucked.” Breaking up with her wayward boyfriend “is like losing Mark all over again.” She admits she feels sorry for herself but says “now I had yet another thing to manage –menopause.”

After a few years she is still not finding closure and is ready to go on “another sprinkling mission.” This time she learns how to deal with the various features of the RV such as how to empty the sewage tank and find the propane valve. On a trip to Sedona, a Tarot card reading buoys her spirits and opens her further to spiritual revelations. The many hikes and adventurous activities such as zip lining continue to cement her excellent relationship with her daughters and, I believe, ease her fraught mental state. She lets her intuited connection with her husband and the presence of Mark in a Box guide her route.

They sprinkle ashes at the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, a fancy boot store, the national Civil Rights Museum, Graceland and many many more, all with some connection to the deceased man. Again, using her intuition to chose the route, (“something told me to visit Mark’s father”) they end the trip by visiting Mark’s childhood home where she asks permission to sprinkle her husband’s ashes on the grounds.

By the end of this, the third trip, she returns to work with a feeling her brain works better and her job becomes less stressful. She finds she can deal with household emergencies now.

“How does a person know when they are finally healed from a wound so deep they thought it would never close?” Laura asks at the end of the book. It took her a long time but she finally won out.