List $25.00

Written by Tawni O'Dell - Audio book performed by Dylan Baker - Abridged Fiction - Abridgment approved by Tawni O'Dell - 4 CASSETTES - 6 hours

Publisher, Harper Audio (January 2000)

The printed edition of this title is an Oprah's Book Club Selection!

An intense, vibrant debut novel set among the back roads of Pennsylvania's mining country

Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking Rolling Rock and chasing girls. He should be freed from his closed-minded, stricken coal town, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he's constantly reminded of just how messed up his life is.

With his mother in jail for killing his abusive father, Harley is an orphan with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager. Just nineteen years old, he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters, whose feelings about him range from stifling dependence to loathing. And once he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two living down the road, those Victoria's Secret catalogs just won't do the trick anymore. He wants Callie Mercer so badly he fears he will explode. But it's the family secrets, the lies, and the unspoken truths that light the fuse and erupt into a series of staggering surprises, leaving what's left of his family in tatters. Through every ordeal, the unforgettable Harley could never know that his endearing humor, his love for his sisters, and his bumbling heroics would redeem them all.

Funny and heartbreaking, O'Dell's pitch-perfect characters capture the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty. Back Roads is a riveting novel by a formidable new talent.

About the Author
Tawni O'Dell was born and raised in the Allegheny mountains of western Pennsylvania, "a beautiful ruined place where the rolling hills are pitted with dead gray mining towns like cigarette burns on a green carpet." She earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University. A mother of two, she lives with her husband in Illinois. This is her first novel.