Christopher L Bolinger
Mr. Kyle Clark
BA 1101
11 April 2008
A Hope in the Unseen
This book was a moving tale of a young man’s journey through the road construction of life. Even when the road is full of obstacles and potholes, Cedric is able to successfully navigate it. He learns that he must slow down at times and carefully plot a successful course. My mother has always said success begins with a hard look at the future and many hours of preparation. Cedric follows this same advice and is able to go from an inner-city school with poor academic ratings to Brown University, one of the top ranked colleges in the nation. Coming from a very poor family with no formal education other than high school, I managed to enroll in college and am less than one and a half years from graduating with my bachelor’s. This was only possible because of a strong faith in God and constant encouragement from my parents. I was able to relate to Cedric because of his strong determination to overcome all obstacles and reach his dreams. “If there is a will, there is a way.”
When I was a young child, my father was a ranch-hand. While the job gave him the freedom to attend our school functions and allowed him to spend time with us, it came with a very meager salary. For close to seventeen years, my family lived well below the poverty line. My mother had the ability to feed a family of five and four day hands on less than two hundred dollars per month. I currently go to the grocery store every other day and spend fifty each time. In the beginning of the story, we find out that Cedric comes from a single mother. She works hard to provide for him, but is unable to make ends meet. There were months in which I overheard my parents discussing similar circumstances. Towards the end of the book, we find out that Barbara Jennings has let the rent get over two thousand dollars behind. She is unable to catch up and must put her faith in a member of her church to provide the money. The money...