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Eleven-year-old Thebes calls her aunt Hattie with a crisis. Not only is her mother, Min, hallucinating about a million silver cars, but her older brother Logan is in trouble at school. And that's just for starters.

"The house was crumbling around them, the back screen door had blown off in the wind, a family of aggressive mice was living behind the piano, the neighbors were [angry] because of hatchets being thrown into their yard at all hours ... basically things were out of control."

The call for help launches Hattie on a cross-country trek with her niece and nephew in a Ford Aerostar van that has seen better days.

Already, you might see that some aspects of Miriam Toews' new novel are predictable. If you guessed that Min, who has been mentally ill most of her life, is the wobbly center of this family's universe, you'd guess right. You'd also be correct in assuming that Hattie is the estranged family member who keeps getting sucked back into Min's orbit despite moving to another continent to escape.

It's not a new formula as stories go: Estranged woman returns to family fold to help in time of need, learns she can cope, falls in love with family again.

But that's about as formulaic as The Flying Troutmans gets. Ms. Toews delivers the story of the Troutmans' journey from America's northern border to its southern one in search of the children's father with a fresh voice and liberal doses of humor.

As with her previous, critically acclaimed, novel, A Complicated Kindness, Ms. Toews infuses her characters' voices with authenticity. Not for a moment would a reader doubt the antics of 15-year-old Logan and adolescent rap-talkin' Thebes.

During a break from traveling, the family relaxes in a motel pool, and a teen girl joins them.

"Are y'all saved? she asked.

From what, yo? said Thebes. ...

The wrath of Christ, said the girl.

Oh, that, said Thebes, I don't know if we all are saved. Let me put it to my bro. Logan? Are we all saved from the wrath of Christ?

I am the wrath of Christ, said Logan.

Oh, said Thebes. Hold up. I'll ask my aunt. Hattie! she said. Are we all saved from the – ?"

The author's lack of quotation marks in dialogue is at first distracting. It feels like an artifice meant to emphasize something – perhaps the Troutmans' free-wheeling ways? Their chaotic lives? Or maybe the indistinct line between sanity and insanity? Then again maybe it's just Ms. Toews' style. Nevertheless, underneath lies a lovely tragicomedy about hope.

As Hattie watches Logan shoot hoops, she questions him:

Do you worry that the ball won't go in? I asked him.

No, he said, I always believe that it will. Every time.

Seriously? I said. Even when you've missed a bunch of shots?

Yeah, I think it's gonna go in every time, he said.

And then, so when it doesn't go in, do you feel all disillusioned? I asked him.

No, not at all, he said, 'cause I'm always sure the next one will go in."

Beatriz Terrazas is a Dallas-based freelance writer and photographer.

The Flying Troutmans

Miriam Toews

(Counterpoint, $24) READ an excerpt from The Flying Troutmans on Texas Pages, Guidelive.com/ texaspages.

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