Back Roads Paperback - 2004
by Tawni O'Dell
The poignant and hilarious "New York Times" bestseller and Oprah Book-of-the-Month club pick. "Not since S.E. Hinton ("The Outsiders") has a female novelist penned such a tough and titillating portrait of lower-class, crime-ridden manhood."--Amazon.com.
Summary
One day you're that guy, and the next day you're assigned to a social worker and a therapist and given the choice of either being a LEGAL ADULT with three DEPENDENTS or an ORPHAN with NOBODY." --From Back Roads
Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his closed-minded, stricken coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's constantly reminded of just how messed up his life is.
With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, Harley is an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager. Just nineteen years old, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters, whose feelings about him range from stifling dependence to loathing. And once he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two living down the road, those Victoria's Secret catalogs just won't do the trick anymore. He wants Callie Mercer so badly he fears he will explode. But it's the family secrets, the lies, and the unspoken truths that light the fuse and erupt into a series of staggering surprises, leaving what's left of his family in tatters. Through every ordeal, the unforgettable Harley could never know that his endearing humor, his love for his sisters, and his bumbling heroics would redeem them all.
Funny and heartbreaking, Tawni O'Dell's pitch-perfect characters capture the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty. Back Roads is a riveting novel by a formidable new talent.
First line
All those times me and Skip tried to kill his little brother, Donny, were just for fun.
Details
- Title Back Roads
- Author Tawni O'Dell
- Binding Paperback
- Edition Reprint
- Pages 352
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Berkley Books, NY USA
- Date June 1, 2004
- ISBN 9780451212450 / 0451212452
- Weight 0.7 lbs (0.32 kg)
- Dimensions 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 in (20.32 x 13.46 x 2.29 cm)
- Ages 18 to UP years
- Grade levels 13 - UP
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: Mid-Atlantic
- Demographic Orientation: Rural
- Demographic Orientation: Small Town
- Geographic Orientation: Pennsylvania
- Topical: Family
- Library of Congress subjects Domestic fiction, Brothers and sisters
- Dewey Decimal Code FIC
Media reviews
"Tense...involving...deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy who's in trouble." New York Times Book review
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