BENT ROAD by Lori Roy delves into the pain of family
secrets and the fear of not being able to protect the ones
we love with subtle and terrifying emotion. As each layer
is pulled away to reveal another truth, another pain,
readers will lose themselves in a world as harsh,
unforgiving and fertile as Kansas farmland.
Arthur and Celia Scott pack up their belongings and their
two children as they move to Kansas in order to escape the
Detroit riots of '67. It's a move Celia never thought to
make because for the last twenty years, Arthur has never
taken Celia to the home he grew up in.
Within days of their return, a small girl goes missing,
catapulting the family into a nightmare of rumors. The
small girl bears a resemblance to Eve, Arthur's sister,
whose mysterious death twenty-five years ago tore the
family and the town apart.
Celia's only concern is protecting her children, Daniel and
Evie, but here in Kansas, where their lives are in constant
upheaval, she doesn't know how or what she should protect
them from. Evie is dressing in her dead aunt's clothing.
Daniel is on the verge of manhood without a clue how to get
there, and Celia fears that Evie could be the next girl to
disappear.
Clever and elegant in its simplicity BENT ROAD portrays the
complexity of family with deft writing. Every scene is
charged with suspense, tightening the fear until it
culminates into a terrifyingly real choice.
The book is written in a third person present tense. Ex.
Not once, in all their time together, has Arthur taken
Celia back to his hometown, never even considered a visit.
The first forty pages or so feel a little awkward as you
adjust your mind to reading this verb tense, but do not put
this book down. This point of view creates immediacy and a
distance between the reader and character which serves to
heighten the suspense.
The simplicity of this book, of the writing style, is a
breath-taking achievement. So much pain and hope and fear
are packed into these pages that I completely forgot the
time as I lost myself to this story. BENT ROAD is an
emotional roller coaster that has you saying a prayer even
as you turn the pages a little faster.
"Don't be fooled by the novel's apparent simplicity: What
emerges from the surface is a tale of extraordinary
emotional power, one of longstanding pain set against the
pulsating drumbeat of social change." -Sarah Weinman,
NPR.org For twenty years, Celia Scott has watched her
husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his
sister Eve's death. But when the 1967 Detroit riots frighten
him even more than his Kansas past, he convinces Celia to
pack up their family and return to the road he grew up on,
Bent Road, and the same small town where Eve mysteriously
died. And then a local girl disappears, catapulting the
family headlong into a dead man's curve. . . . On Bent Road,
a battered red truck cruises ominously along the prairie; a
lonely little girl dresses in her dead aunt's clothes; a boy
hefts his father's rifle in search of a target; and a mother
realizes she no longer knows how to protect her children. It
is a place where people learn: Sometimes killing is the
kindest way.
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy