Harding impresses me with his writing but he's like a wild, untamed riever

George's father, Howard Crosby, leaves the family rather than face possible incarceration in a hospital for the insane. He's not insane, he's epileptic (ca 1925), but it does seem rather insane to abandon apparently beloved and fairly large (4 kids?) family, in the middle of a Maine winter, setting off without notice or warning with the peddler's wagon and the mule - how will he survive, and, more important, how will they? This is a setup for a very good if somewhat over-the-top plot, which would be great except that it's not a set up, it comes about 2/3rds into "Tinkers," as if Paul Harding is feeling his way through the material. As with so many flashback plots, the tension is for the most part diminished as we know the final outcome - the family does survive. But we don't know (yet) at what cost, especially to George: Does he feel lifelong guilt about his father's abandoning the family, as the spring that set the action into motion was his father's biting George's hand during an epileptic fit. Maybe George thinks he's the cause? We don't know at this point what exactly the relation is between the two braids of the plot: George dying in bed in the present, and the struggles of his father and the young family about 90 years back. Harding continues to impress me with the sheer beauty of his writing, but he's like a wild river, untamed, the writing goes every which way and the story gets lost or submerged. We'll see how much of the story he can pull together in the final 2 sections (last third of the book).