Peter Cabot Gets Lost

Peter Cabot Gets Lost (2021) Cat Sebastian (The Cabots #2)

Set across the US in 1960

I read Tommy Cabot Was Here in an anthology years ago, and enjoyed it, but for some reason kept putting off reading the other two books that followed. This is the second, set a couple years later, and following Peter, Tommy’s nephew.

Tommy has graduated, and knows only that he doesn’t want to follow his family’s plans, so he offers to give a classmate a ride across the country, if only to avoid joining the campaign trail for his father’s presidential campaign.

“At what number can the senator reach you, Mr. Cabot?” He could almost hear her raised eyebrows.

“I’m afraid I can’t be reached,” Peter answered, using the same line she had used for the past decade when his father was too busy or uninterested to come to the phone.

Caleb Murphy has worked hard to escape Tennessee so he can make something of himself. And although he loves his family, he never wants to go back, because he can’t be himself around them.

I feel homesick for the way I wish things were.

So the two set off across the country, with Peter not having thought things through at all, and Caleb stubbornly insisting upon paying his own way.

Including trying to navigate when it isn’t his turn to drive.

He knew they were trying to reach Chicago, but the signs made it look like Chicago was simultaneously in all directions and no direction.

…

“The problem is that the world goes in all different directions, and a map is just…there, all flat and judgmental. I can’t look at one and imagine where I am, let alone where I’m supposed to go.”

Peter has arranged to stay with his aunt, who is Tommy Cabot’s ex-wife and Daniel Cabot’s mother.

She’s also marvelous.

She tried to convince me to go to London with her and my cousin for the summer.” He laughed. “She said that if I went with her, she’d buy me a new suit. And when I told her that new suits weren’t exactly tempting, she offered me a pony.”

The story is the two falling in love, but also Tommy learning how to decide what he wants for himself instead of simply accepting what his father tells him to do.

Characters: Peter Cabot, Caleb Murphy, Uncle Tommy Cabot, Aunt Patty Cabot, Harry, Jon Epstein

Cover by Bran at Crowglass Designs

Published by Cat Sebastian

Rating: 8/10

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