Bowlaway opens in a small Massachusetts town close to Boston (Somerville, in the author’s imagination) at the turn of the twentieth century where Bertha Truitt, our protaganist, is found unconscious in a cemetery with a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold in her possession. She claims to have invented bowling and quickly builds a bowling alley where women are allowed to bowl without curtains to separate them from males and young men previously discounted for their disabilities become key employees. Bertha encourages women to express more of themselves and share more than their love of bowling.  The alley itself becomes the instrument through which one learns about the characters’ pasts and the effects on their present and future lives.  

McCracken takes the reader on a quirky journey across generations that include bizarre fallouts such as the Great Boston Molasses Flood and spontaneous combustion of a person.  She claims her sweet spot in writing is “slightly ridiculous but also tragic.” In fact, her writing is witty and sharp and she is able to convey many of the social and cultural issues of the time periods in entertaining verse.  

Our readers loved Bertha’s’s spunk but  wished for more of her in the book;  many felt there were too many extraneous characters that were not developed and led to a lack of coherence in the storyline.  Upon reflection after our meeting, one of our readers commented that she felt McCracken was able to convey the differences between people’s inward- and outward-facing lives.  It is a fitting coda to consider if one is tempted to bowl away with McCracken.