Combining the modern-farm-life realities of Jane Smiley´s
A Thousand Acres with the quirky humor and eccentric characters of Carolyn Chute´s
The Beans of Egypt, Maine, Q Road is a charming debut from Bonnie Jo Campbell.
Greenland Township, Michigan: On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and prefab homes spring up in last year´s cornfields. All along Q Road—or “Queer Road,” as the locals call it—the old, rural life collides weirdly with the new.
With a cast of lovingly rendered eccentrics and a powerful sense of place,
Q Road is a lively tale of nature and human desire that alters the landscape of contemporary fiction.
Campbell, winner of the 2001 Pushcart Prize, is a storyteller every bit as gifted as Larry Brown or Eudora Welty, a social commentator and wordsmith of the first order. This novel shows what happens when a hardscrabble town meets modern development.
Publishers Weekly A thoughtful, well-paced, deeply moral (though not moralizing) novel full of hard lessons and the wisdom gained from them across generations.