Rules of the Road

I’ve started a book called Rules of the Road, by Joan Bauer. It's realistic fiction. This book is about a girl named Jenna Boller who works at Gladstone’s Shoes as the number one employee there. As she starts getting bored with her summer, all she wants is a break or vacation from work and her complicated family. Luckily, a woman named Madeline Gladstone, the long-time head of Gladstone’s Shoes, hires Jenna to be her driver for six weeks in the summer, and Jenna quickly takes the job offer. She will drive Madeline to different shoe stores and conventions around the country. As the trip starts, Jenna starts learning about life and the meaning of it, as Mrs. Gladstone also learns a lot from Jenna. Their adventure leads them into some trouble with Gladstone’s Shoes, and Jenna and Mrs. Gladstone have to fight their way through the hard times this trip brings them.

The two main characters in this book are Jenna Boller and Madeline Gladstone. Jenna Boller is sixteen and has a hard life at home with her family. Her father is never around, and when he shows up with out notice, he’s always drunk and quite rude. She lives with her sister and mother, who even encouraged her to go on this road trip and to take a vacation from all this hard work Jenna does in the summer. Although Jenna works hard and it’s not as easy as it sounds to sell shoes, she loves the business and she is the best employee at Gladstone’s Shoes.

Madeline Gladstone is an old woman, in about her late seventies, who is the president of Gladstone’s Shoes. She has a horrible son who keeps trying to encourage her mother to sell the company because of how much money they’d get from it, but Madeline refuses. She is a strong and hard-working woman, who sticks with her ideas. She and Jenna create a special and caring relationship together where they would never let each other down.

What the two characters have to go through is hard because of the annoying and rude son of Mrs. Gladstone, who keeps forcing Mrs. Gladstone to sell her company because of all the money they would get from it. It is difficult for Jenna and Madeline to avoid Madeline’s son, so all they can do is work together and not step down. I’m close to the end of this book it's a pretty good book and I recommend it to people who really like realistic fiction.