Sullivan Road

by Pierce Lehmbeck

Book Overview

IN A WEE, OBSCURE part of backwoods Georgia, ill-educated Dru Sullivan and his precocious six-year-old nephew Bo forge a sustaining relationship in this multi-faceted book. A tragic love affair, two... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1434335534
• ISBN13: 9781434335531
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Authorhouse
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Vivid and compelling

I have to admit at the outset that I am the author's eldest child and may be considered to have no business writing a review of this book. However, I am very particular in many ways and I think my judgment is sound enough to get away with it. I will be brief and focus on two things - the vivid and compelling, and persistently honest, characterizations and descriptive writing and the honest and painful to face descriptions of current race relations. As for the vividness, there is one scene where Dru is hung over in the swamp that still makes me shudder. Read it and learn. Many more scenes where the land and people come richly and sometimes fragrantly alive can be found throughout the book. I do not like the flat hot humid lands of southern Georgia but I could envision living there by knowing the place and its human and animal residents (I am thinking of the mules). Working as I do in a major southern city in a highly interracial environment, appropriate (by this I mean equitable and honest) race relations are always at the forefront of my mind. In large part, my parents raised me this way. This book has helped me appreciate my father's journey from the near-medieval race relations of his day, wherein many blacks and whites cared deeply for each other yet lived under rigid and unjust rules of conduct that separated them at the most fundamental level, to the modern era when Barack Obama is our President. And did I tell you there is a murder mystery? It's not forced into the book and it never seems out of place but it is a critical element of the storyline. There is also a concept in the book that is a powerful one for my father - the concept of the Godspot. Readers of my father's previous writings will know that this is essentially that feeling one gets in one's heart that tells us if we are doing right or wrong - our direct and instant connection to our personal "God." Count on the characters to be paying attention to theirs. In summary, this compact and intense book touched me and I am very proud of my father.

Ole Dooly Would be Proud

When I first read a review of Sullivan Road, I knew it was a book I needed to read. Having deep family roots in the red clay of Dooly County, Georgia and having had family live right down the road from a whole bunch of folks named Sullivan, I began with a bit of trepidation and fear that some of our family's history might be revealed. Would that our family were so blessed to have been anywhere near the models for this moving and poignant account of doing what had to be done in a time when moral standards were being tested left and right and purse-strings stretched to the limit. The vivid characterization and incredible settings for this novel are so outstanding it is hard to imagine that the dialogues of Dru and Bo with each other and within themselves could be even better. Chapter 8 is the most marvelous chapter of any book I have ever read and I look forward to a sequel, a second novel or anything else to come from the tip of the pen of this imaginative, honest and amazing author.

A Moving and Poignant Story

I love to read an author's first novel. In my experience a person's first book is not the book that they want to write but the book that they need to write. This is the story that has been niggling at their thoughts for many years... the story that they've day dreamed about and written and re-written in their head a thousand times, and more often than not, lived themselves. This premise certainly rings true for Pierce Lehmbeck's first novel, "Sullivan Road". It is a truly moving and poignant story. The way the author describes the characters and their lives' in the 1940s rural Georgia is so rich you feel like you know the people and the place. "Sullivan Road" is a captivating story with great characters and an intense setting. I highly recommend it to anyone, especially those with roots in the rural south.

Ireland in central Georgia USA

Sullivan Road is a must-read for Irish-Americans and all the rest of us who adore colorful writing and a meaningful story. The Sullivan family of 1940s central Georgia, though a few generations removed from Ireland, live as if one foot remained in the old country while the other foot claimed the best darn farmland in Shannon County, GA. This is as intimate a story as you're ever likely to read about the love between an uncle and his nephew. Uncle Dru's struggles with life, women, not enough formal education, and alcoholism shape his destiny while burdening little Bo with more than any young boy ought to bear.