The Evening Road
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Meet Ottie Lee Henshaw. Quick of mind and pleasing to the eye, she navigates a stifling marriage, a lecherous boss, and on one day in the summer of 1920, an odyssey across the countryside to witness a dark and fearful celebration.
Meet Calla Destry. A young black woman desperate to escape a place where the stench of violence hangs heavy in the air, and to find the lover who has promised her a new life.
Two remarkable women on the move through an America riven by fear and hatred. Every road leads to the bedlam of Marvel. There are buses laid on and Klan members gathering. Lives will collide and be changed forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At once dreamily timeless and fitting for the current national moment, Hunt's (Neverhome) hypnotic latest takes place on one evening in August 1920, when two equally strong and scarred women cross paths in Indiana. Ottie Lee Henshaw is at work when her boss reports that townspeople in nearby Marvel are planning to lynch several black youths accused of crimes against whites. Elated, he gathers Ottie Lee and her husband, Dale, and the three (all of whom are white) set off for the "rope party." Their trip is constantly interrupted by the lure of a catfish supper, a car accident that leaves them walking, and a chance ride that delivers them to a Quaker prayer vigil instead of the lynching as Ottie Lee's vibrant facade slowly cracks to reveal her deep fears. Meanwhile, black teenager Calla Destry goes to the river near Marvel to meet her ambitious white lover who calls himself Leander. When he doesn't show, she takes her foster father's car and rides off to escape Marvel's angry mob and find Leander for an urgent conversation. As her mind shifts between past and present, real and imaginary, Calla's journey reveals the secrets she hides. 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.
