-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | Read-Alikes
by Shannon Bowring
From debut author Shannon Bowring comes a novel of small town America that Pulitzer-winner Richard Russo calls, "measured, wise, and beautiful."
In most small towns, the private is also public. In the town of Dalton, one local makes an unthinkable decision that leaves the community reeling. In the aftermath, their problems, both small and large, reveal a deeper understanding of the lives of their neighbors, and remind us all that no one is exactly who we think they are.
It's 1990. In Dalton, Maine, life goes on. Rose goes to work at the diner every day, her bruises hidden from both the customers and her two young boys. At a table she waits, Dr. Richard Haskell looks back on the one choice that's charted his entire life, before his thoughts wander back to his wife, Trudy, and her best friend.
Trudy and Bev have been friends for longer than they can count, and something more than lovers to each other for some time now—a fact both accepted and ignored by their husbands. Across town, new mother Bridget lives with her high school sweetheart Nate, and is struggling with postpartum after a traumatic birth. And nearer still is teenager Greg, trying to define the complicated feelings he has about himself and his two close friends.
The Road to Dalton offers valuable understandings of what it means to be alive in the world—of pain and joy, conflict and love, and the endurance that comes from living.
What's the last book you received as a gift, and what's the last book you gave as a gift?
I received Bel Canto annotated by Ann Patchett and Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides for Christmas I think the last one I officially gifted was The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring
-Anne_Glasgow
Which authors should we interview?
One of my new favorite authors is Shannon Bowring, whose first two books, The Road to Dalton and Where the Forest Meets the River, were among my favorite this year. And she has a third in the series coming out! https://www.shannonlbowring.com/
-Evonne_Benedict
"Bowring offers endless, rich details about life in Dalton, making a satisfying story of each chapter, expanding the emotional history of the place, yielding great depths of pain behind small, daily gestures of human connection...An impressive debut bursting with detail and love for the town it brings to life." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Bowring captures in her compassionate debut the rhythms of life in small-town Maine...By the end, an unexpected death touches everyone, a plot point that Bowring confidently steers away from melodrama, landing instead on poignant realism. Readers will want to take their time with this one." —Publishers Weekly
"Paved with beauty, grace, humility, and love…a triumphant work that reminds us what literature should be." —Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez
"The kind of book that too often flies under the literary radar these days: measured, wise, beautiful." —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
"Over and over, The Road to Dalton locates the miraculous in the mundane, then holds it up, glimmering, for the reader to see. In the end it reminds us that, no matter our circumstances, each of us is imbued with a dignity that cannot be denied or taken from us." —Ron Currie, Jr., author of Everything Matters and The One-Eyed Man
This information about The Road to Dalton 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.
Shannon Bowring has been nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net award, and was recently selected in The Best Small Fictions. She holds an MFA from University of Southern Maine Stonecoast and currently resides in Maine. The Road to Dalton is her first novel.
If you liked The Road to Dalton, try these:
by Lucas Schaefer
Published 2026
For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.
by Denne Michele. Norris
Published 2026
In this heart-wrenching debut novel, a young Black gay man reckoning with the death of his father must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex.
by Therese Anne Fowler
Published 2021
A gripping contemporary novel that examines the American dream through the lens of two families living side by side in an idyllic neighborhood, over the course of one summer that changes their lives irrevocably, from the New York Times bestselling author of Z and A Well-Behaved Woman.
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
