Back Roads

Fülszöveg

"Back Roads transports us to the hills of western Pennsylvania and introduces a wonderfully touching narrator, Harley Altmyer. Watching Harley grapple with his sisters, his jobs, and his lover is by turns comic and suspenseful. This is a fast, furious, funny novel." —M ABE II llVfSfy, author of the novel [ 111 M I Hi IS
arley Altmyer, the heartbreaking and lovable hero ¦ of Tawni O'Dell's riveting debut novel, should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters. He has, at best, a shaky hold on the vicissitudes of day care, mac and cheese dinners, and visits to a once-devoted mother who seems not only resigned, but glad to hand over the reins of motherhood to her son. As he sees it, his life is "lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes and levels of purity." Frustrated,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"Back Roads transports us to the hills of western Pennsylvania and introduces a wonderfully touching narrator, Harley Altmyer. Watching Harley grapple with his sisters, his jobs, and his lover is by turns comic and suspenseful. This is a fast, furious, funny novel." —M ABE II llVfSfy, author of the novel [ 111 M I Hi IS
arley Altmyer, the heartbreaking and lovable hero ¦ of Tawni O'Dell's riveting debut novel, should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three beloved but unruly younger sisters. He has, at best, a shaky hold on the vicissitudes of day care, mac and cheese dinners, and visits to a once-devoted mother who seems not only resigned, but glad to hand over the reins of motherhood to her son. As he sees it, his life is "lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes and levels of purity." Frustrated, overwhelmed, and utterly endearing, he's a guy in an impossible situation: an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager.
Life is further complicated when he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two down the road. He wants Callie Mercer so badly he fears he will explode. Family secrets and the unspoken truths long held at bay collide with his obsession, unearthing a series of staggering surprises. In the face of each unexpected family revelation and through every wrenching ordeal, the unforgettable Harley instantly
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wins your heart doing the best he can to hold it all together. In the end, he could never know that his endearing humor, his love for his sisters, and his bumbling heroics would redeem them all.
Funny and poignant, O'Dell's pitch-perfect characters capture the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with unerring honesty. Back Roads is an entrancing drama by a formidable
new talent.
TAWH
D'DELL
was born and raised in the
Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania, "a beautiful ruined place where the rolling hills are pitted with dead-gray mining towns like cigarette burns on a green carpet." She earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University. A mother of two, she lives with her husband in Illinois. This is her first novel.
JACKET DESIiiN BY SUSAN MITCHELL / PHOTOEIIAPHY OY DAVID MAZED Vissza