Roastbeef’s Promise: When Your Dad’s Dying Wish Is to Have His Ashes Sprinkled in Each State, What’s a Son to Do?

David Jerome
Smack Books (2009)
ISBN 9780981545912
Reviewed by Marcy Blesy for Reader Views (11/09) 

 

“Roastbeef’s Promise” by David Jerome takes the reader on a wild ride across North America’s 48 contiguous states.  The plot of the story is simple.  Dying from Alzheimer’s disease, Charlie Hume makes his son Jim promise to scatter his ashes in all 48 continental states upon his death.  After Charlie’s passing, so begins the crazy journey of college drop-out Jim to fulfill his father’s wishes.  Starting in Maryland and ending in Virginia, Jim fulfills his obligation while meeting a peculiar cast of characters and encountering outrageous situations along the way. 

This tongue-in-cheek humorous story broadcasts the glaring stereotypes of Americana from wild, drunk, fraternity brothers window-jumping onto mattresses, to rude New York City police officers unbothered by a broken car window, to a tobacco-chewing North Carolinian who grows his own chew, to crazed Elvis fans clamoring for Elvis’ toenail at Graceland.  Jim encounters the kindness of Americans willing to help a young man fulfill his father’s last wish (i.e., giving him a job selling souvenirs at a Mount Rushmore shop) and those not-so-kind Americans who are only interested in their own agenda (i.e., a motorcyclist faking an accident to steal Jim’s borrowed Pink lady Mary Kay Cadillac).   Jim has accidents, loses money, and gets ill, but comes out a winner in the end. 

Along the way, Jim drops his father’s ashes in very different locations from the sentimental (the finish line at the Indianapolis racetrack) to the silly (as a wax and ash fingernail on a George Washington Statue) to the mundane (at a Stuckey’s restaurant).  In the end Jim makes a name for himself helping others fulfill their wishes, too. 

The story had me laughing out loud at times and groaning in disbelief at the lunacy of some of the situations, which I think was the author’s intent.  The read is easy, satiating the reader with everything American: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Mr. Jerome did a particularly nice job of highlighting American sayings whether on a t-shirt or bumper sticker.  And readers get a nice combination of geography and history lessons while they follow Jim’s adventures around the country.  The travel enthusiast will be rewarded with this quirky tale in “Roastbeef’s Promise” by David Jerome.

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