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Two women, two secrets: one desperate and extraordinary day.
Meet Ottie Lee Henshaw, a startling, challenging beauty in small-town Indiana. Quick of mind, she navigates a stifling marriage, a lecherous boss, and on one day in the summer of 1930 an odyssey across the countryside to witness a dark and fearful celebration.
Meet Calla Destry, a determined young woman desperate to escape the violence of her town and to find the lover who has promised her a new life.
On this day, the countryside of Jim Crow-era Indiana is no place for either. It is a world populated by frenzied demagogues and crazed revelers, by marauding vigilantes and grim fish suppers, by possessed blood hounds and, finally, by the Ku Klux Klan itself. Reminiscent of the works of Louise Erdrich, Edward P. Jones, and Marilynne Robinson, The Evening Road is the story of two remarkable women on the move through an America riven by fear and hatred, and eager to flee the secrets they have left behind.
"Starred Review. Hunt brings to mind Flannery O'Connor's grotesques and Barry Hannah's bracingly inventive prose and cranks. He is strange, challenging, and a joy to read." - Kirkus
"Though the novel's meandering odysseys sometimes feel frustrating, Hunt's striking prose and visionary imagery capture America's community bonds, violent prejudices, falling darkness, and searing light." - Publishers Weekly
"Critically acclaimed Hunt (Neverhome, 2014) offers fascinating characters and the subtlest of life-changing moments." - Booklist
"Wow! Beautifully crafted, seductive, evocative language and a story that punches you in the gut and lays you low and yet leaves you wanting more. It's rich, deep, dark, harrowing stuff and it does what all great fiction does - it lays ahold of the heart and won't let go. You'll think about this book for weeks, if not years, to come." - Daniel James Brown, bestselling author of The Boys in The Boat
"A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, The Evening Road hauls up insight, sorrow, and even-somehow-wit from the well of American history." - Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room and The Wonder
"This dramatic story of one horrific day in Middle America a century ago is as relevant to our own era as the intolerance, latent and otherwise, that still characterizes all levels of our society. The Evening Road is both a major literary achievement and a timely and inspiring story in these troubles, latter days." - Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger In The Kingdom
This information about The Evening Road was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Laird Hunt's most recent novel, Zorrie, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Hunt has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, and Italy's Bridge Award. He teaches in the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University and lives in Providence.
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Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live
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