Learning to Drive: A Novel

Learning to Drive (2003), a novel by Mary Hays, follows Charlotte McGuffey, a young widow and mother who becomes riddled with guilt when her husband, whom she had recently asked for a separation, is killed while crossing a street in a small town in Vermont. Overcome with grief and looking for answers, Charlotte travels to the small family farm in the town where her husband died, and where she is forced to come to terms with her faith, her family history, and her future.

The novel begins as Charlotte, the young mother of two children, Baird and Hoskins, tells her husband, Melvin, just before he embarks on a solitary trip that she'd like a separation. It is 1952, and Charlotte has been raised in a devout Christian Scientist family. Keeping the family together is one of the strict adherence of the faith, and Charlotte lies awake at night knowing simultaneously that what she is doing will upset her entire family and that her marriage is in shambles. She and Melvin are too different for them to have a happy life together.

Charlotte had a difficult childhood in rural New York. Her mother died when Charlotte was 10 years old, and her two sisters, Kitty and Rosey, stepped in to act as pseudo-mothers after the loss. Kitty, who became a Christian Science practitioner, still upholds the traditions of her family. Charlotte is practicing, but not as devout as her sisters. She is also interested in her own happiness.



Very soon after asking for a separation, Charlotte finds out that Melvin has been hit by a car in the small town of Beede, Vermont, where his family has a farm and where he was going on a business trip. The loss of Melvin and the sudden realization that she now has to raise two children alone, shakes Charlotte to her core. She blames herself, believing that asking for a separation led to this insurmountable loss. She decides to leave New York to go to Beede to stay in the family farmhouse where she can try to find answers for the mounting questions that come from her grief.

In Beede, Charlotte hopes to find answers for her chaotic life, but instead, she finds a hodge-podge cast of characters who force her to reconsider every facet of her existence. Charlotte has been consumed with the idea, which comes from her faith, that all illness and unhappiness comes from a lack of spiritual character. In Vermont, she finds several people who force her to reconsider that belief system, including Francis, an artist with whom she falls in love and has an affair. Francis doesn't believe in the conventional thinking of the time, and with his guidance and the support of the local postmistress, among other neighbors, she begins to find her way.

Soon, Charlotte finds the strength to not only harness her own confidence but also to question the principles of her family and navigate their history. She discovers that her mother was diagnosed with diabetes and would have lived if her family had agreed to take her to a hospital. Going against her sister's wishes, she takes her non-verbal son Hoskins to a doctor, where he is diagnosed with autism. In this uncovering of family secrets, Charlotte is finally able to see the damage that was done to her psyche by her faith and to embrace a new way of being as a mother and a woman.



Mary Hays is a Vermont-based author and a teacher of third and fourth grade. She has written a number of short stories and plays and has an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago. Learning to Drive is her first novel.