Road Ends: A Novel

Road Ends: A Novel

From an acclaimed writer whose work invites comparisons to Elizabeth Strout, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford comes a brilliantly layered novel about self-sacrifice, family relationships, and the weight of our responsibility to those we love.
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The New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge returns with a brilliantly layered novel about self-sacrifice, family relationships, and the weight of our responsibility to those we love.
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Twenty-one-year-old Megan Cartwright has never been outside Struan, Ontario, a small town of deep woods and forbidding winters. The second oldest in a house with seven brothers, Megan is the caregiver, housekeeper, and linchpin of the family, but the day comes when she decides itâ€™s time she had a life of her own. Leaving everything behind, Megan sets out for London.
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In the wake of her absence, her family begins to unravel. Meganâ€™s parents and brothers withdraw from one another, leading emotionally isolated lives while still under the same roof. Her oldest brother, Tom, reeling from the death of his best friend, rejects a promising future to move back home. Emily, her mother, rarely leaves the room where she dreamily dotes on her newborn son, while Meganâ€™s four-year-old brother, Adam, is desperate for warmth and attention. And as time passes, Meganâ€™s father, Edward, stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that his household is coming undone. Torn between her independence and family ties, Megan must make an impossible choice.
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Nuanced, compelling, and searingly honest, Road Ends illuminates how we each make peace with the demands of love. Mary Lawson delivers compassion and heartbreak in equal measure in her most stunning novel to date.

Praise for Road Ends
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â€œMary Lawsonâ€™s story of a dysfunctional family in a northern Ontario logging town is told in scenes that are as palpably tender and surprising as they are quietly disturbing. . . . [Lawson] has an uncanny talent for evoking the textures of her charactersâ€™ moods while moving them unsentimentally through London and Struan.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review
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â€œLike all great writersâ€”and Lawson is among the finestâ€”she tells her story in a deceptively simple and straightforward way, but one that resonates with anyone who has ever struggled with doing the right thing by a family member despite a desperate longing to escape that burden.â€â€”The Star
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â€œ[Lawson] can justifiably lay claim to an oeuvre as well as a personal geography. If the part of Ontario west of Toronto is Munro country, then the area northwest of New Liskeard and Cobaltâ€”where her fictional towns of Struan and Crow Lake are roughly locatedâ€”may well end up being dubbed Lawson Country.â€â€”National Post
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â€œA beautiful novel, with the psychological twists and turns of each character gently and poignantly unfurled.â€â€”The Globe and Mail

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer The Dial Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2014-07-08
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	The Dial Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2014-07-08
Format	Kindle eBook

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