The Sun Road

Readers of Charming Billy and Crow Lake will identify the landscape of quiet pain and years-held secrets that informs the lives our narrator, Beth Standing, and her mother, Lizzie, a woman who seems to have never been happy. As a child, Beth escaped across the busy London road to her best friend's house, finding solace in the energetic Frederick family: the perfect antidote to the stifling atmosphere of her own home. There, the question of why Beth's family was "different" never really needed an answer.

But as an adult embarking upon an affair with this childhood friend, Beth finds herself confronting memories she had long repressed as she faces the possible consequences of giving in to passion, and of losing one's future to the irrevocable choices of the past.

The Sun Road marks a promising debut for Hannah MacDonald, a novel perfect for discussing, for sharing, and for probing the questions of love, loss, and finally, hope.