Roads of the Heart
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
With the deep emotion and insight of “a true storyteller” (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times), Christopher Tilghman, the author of the acclaimed Mason’s Retreat and In a Father’s Place, has written a powerful new novel of men and women, fathers and families.
Eric Alwin has gone to visit his elderly father, a once commanding and charismatic Maryland senator who has seen his public service soured–and his family broken–by a sex scandal. Realizing that his own unfaithfulness, his disaffection with his career and marriage, seem to be a continuation of a family pattern, Eric is astonished to find his father proposing a bold expedition.
The ensuing trip through the Deep South and the American heartland becomes both a journey into the emotional truth of the Alwin family and a breakthrough into a new kind of resilience and understanding, and love. Along the way, Eric will know anew not only his mother, Audrey, but his sisters, Alice and Poppy, and his own wife and son. As he discovers the surprising secret behind the scandal that defined his father’s fate, he will also realize what he must do to shape a more authentic and coherent life for himself.
Christopher Tilghman’s Roads of the Heart is a brilliant achievement by an author who, grappling with the strains and discords of contemporary American culture, achieves a special understanding of how family members love and lose and find one another every day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A road trip turns into a vehicle for family redemption and reconciliation in Tilghman's heartfelt but clunky second novel (after 1996's Mason's Retreat), which revolves around the efforts of a dying Maryland politician to put his affairs in order. Eric Alwin is the narrator, a disaffected middle-aged New York ad man who spends his weekends in Maryland caring for his father, Frank, a former politician who can barely speak or move after a debilitating stroke. The road to Frank's demise takes a sharp turn when he demands that his son accompany him on a difficult drive to Alabama to present his apologies to his estranged ex-wife. The trip succeeds despite some rough moments, but Frank is determined to get through a similar agenda with other family members. Gathering passengers along the way, father and son finally end up in Columbus, Ohio, meeting yet another (unexpected) relative. The concept of road trip as catharsis and reconciliation works well in the early going, but as the book progresses, the geographical structure makes the novel read like an awkward emotional travelogue, and the writing lapses into mawkish melodrama ("What is forgiveness? Is it choosing to ignore and overlook? Water under the dam? Is it a test, or an embrace?"). Tilghman injects little fresh life into his well-worn conceit.