Bent Road

By Lori Roy

Book Overview

Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel

"Don't be fooled by the novel's apparent simplicity: What emerges from the surface is a tale of extraordinary emotional power, one of longstanding pain set against the pulsating drumbeat of social change."
-Sarah Weinman, NPR.org

For twenty years, Celia Scott has watched her husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his sister Eve's death. But when the 1967 Detroit riots frighten him even more than his Kansas past, he convinces Celia to pack up their family and return to the road he grew up on, Bent Road, and the same small town where Eve mysteriously died. And then a local girl disappears, catapulting the family headlong into a dead man's curve. . . .

On Bent Road, a battered red truck cruises ominously along the prairie; a lonely little girl dresses in her dead aunt's clothes; a boy hefts his father's rifle in search of a target; and a mother realizes she no longer knows how to protect her children. It is a place where people learn: Sometimes killing is the kindest way.

Bent Road has been optioned for film in 2012 by Cross Creek Pictures with Mark Mallouk to adapt and Benderspink to produce.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452297591
• ISBN13: 9780452297593
• Release Date: February 2012
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Boring! Has animal cruelty in it and doesn't ever get to any point until the last chapter. I had

Boring! Has animal cruelty in it that made me sick to even think about! The book doesn't ever get to any real point until the last chapter and it was nothing worth reading. I had to skim most of it and had thoughts of throwing it against the wall just to be done with it! Has no depth whatsoever. I will never read anything from this author again. The children characters were weird and absurdly Sociopathic in their overall thinking process. Don't waste your money on this loser.