BOOK REVIEW

Author: Hribal, C. J.

Title: “The Company Car.”

In ten words or less: Dysfunctional city family moves to a farm.

Emil (Emmie) is one of seven children of Wally and Susan Marie Czabek, and is meeting with his siblings do decide if their elderly parents are still able to live on their own. The story of his parents marriage is told through a series of reminisces and conversations Emmie has with his wife, Dorie.
Married after World War II, Wally and Susan Marie begin life in a new suburb of Chicago, with Wally on the road all week as a traveling salesman and his wife tending to the increasing family. In the late sixties, Wally decides to uproot the family and move to a farm in Augsbury, Wisconsin, a fictional town in the Fox River Valley.
Wally is a planner, a dreamer, and none of his farming attempts are successful. The implementation of his plans falls to his long suffering wife and children, as he continues to travel and spend time at bars. The author is a great storyteller, and the tales of one misadventure after another are hilarious. Why Susan Marie stays with Wally is a question the children ask, when they are old enough, and perhaps the parents are asking themselves the same question.
Local readers may try to puzzle out exactly where the Czabeks have settled. The Butte des Morts bridge is mentioned, as is Appleton, Neenah and other area cities. Author C. J. Hribal has said in interviews that Augsbury is a combination of several towns in the area. Although the book is fiction, Hribal himself was born in Chicago, raised on a farm in Wisconsin, and graduated from St. Norbert College.

Why bother? Fans of Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and John Irving would enjoy this family saga, with its cast of characters that is familiar to any baby boomer.