Lonesome Road - Hardcover

Stiles, Marth Bennett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0917788699 ISBN 13: 9780917788697

Publisher: Gnomon Press, 1998

Synopsis

Fiction. LONESOME ROAD is a gripping story of the sudden disappearance of a child. The book explores the effect of family tragedy on a happy marriage. A chilling and compelling story. The reader is caught up from the beginning and follows the steady anguish in the heart of a mother who has lost here child. The narrative races along, like one of those Bluegrass Thoroughbreds in the setting of this marvelous novel (Bobbie Ann Mason). Martha Bennett Stiles grew up in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She is the author of ten books for young people. This is her first book of adult fiction. Among her awards are two Hopwoods (University of Michigan) and a fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In this first adult novel by the author of several books for young adults (Island Magic, etc.), every parent's worst nightmare?a missing child?shatters a Kentucky family. Veterinarian Grove Brough and his devoted wife, Ruth, breed thoroughbred horses. With two beautiful children and three blueblood pregnant mares, Ruth sometimes feels as if her family had "been granted a divine dispensation." But when eight-year-old Lang disappears on the way to his school bus, everything changes. In a chilling opening scene, we watch as a rusty old Chevrolet glides up beside the child and a dirty, tattooed arm reaches to open the car door. Ruth is driven nearly mad, wondering what she could have done differently that morning, and then is terrified by what she perceives as Grove's affair with another woman. A black detective struggling to make it in a white department is cast as an unlikely candidate to solve this high-profile case. Other key players include the farm manager's wife, whose eighth pregnancy doesn't keep her from wearing pompom-adorned slippers and bright red pant suits; a vengeful, laid-off farmworker who comes off as far too predictably villainous; and a preacher named Reverend MacBee, who juggles rattlesnakes to outwit the devil. The grist is here for a mystery of Southern gothic proportions, but, unfortunately, there's more than a child missing in this book. Some ends are too neatly tied up, and others are ignored?a red baseball cap, for example, a provocative beacon presented early in the novel, never surfaces. Yet even with a surfeit of subplots that weaken the arc of the tale, the main story, with its inherent pathos and the sharp observation of domestic detail, still manages to strike a poignant chord.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gnomon Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0917788699
• ISBN 13: 9780917788697
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275