Publisher, Recorded Books (November 2008)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

ABA Book Sense Book of the Year: Adult Fiction Honor Book

A Library Journal Best Book of the Year

National Book Critics’ Circle Award Finalist

Oprah’s Book Club Selection

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

Pulitzer Prize Winner

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

New York Times best-selling author Cormac McCarthy—winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award—is widely considered one of America's greatest writers. This remarkable departure from his previous works is hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a "novel of horrific beauty, where death is the only truth."

America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst this destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated.

Bleak but brilliant—with glimmers of hope and humor—The Road is a stunning allegory and perhaps the finest novel McCarthy has ever penned.

About the Author: Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he lives today. McCarthy’s fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West: his early novels are set in Tennessee; his later works are set in the Southwest and Mexico. McCarthy’s Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crosssing, Cities of the Plain) was hailed as “an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century,” and “a miracle in prose, an American original.” His most recent novel, No Country for Old Men, was a New York Times best-seller.

About the Performer: Tom Stechschulte has appeared on regional and larger stages in numerous plays, including To Kill a Mockingbird Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He is frequently on Broadway and has credits in many television shows and movies. AudioFile raves: "Stechschulte's voice is natural and convincing."