by Lori Roy
First published 2015
Arthur Scott watches Detroit burn during the 1967 racial riots and makes a desperate decision. He packs up his family and returns to the one place he swore he'd never see again: Bent Road, Kansas. Twenty years earlier, Arthur fled this suffocating farm town after his younger sister Eve died under mysterious circumstances. Now he's back with his wife and children, trading the freedoms of city life for the harsh realities of rural existence. The family struggles to adapt to farm work and the rigid moral codes of their new neighbors. But Arthur discovers that returning home means confronting more than economic hardship and social restrictions. Eve's death still casts a shadow over the community, and the questions that drove Arthur away remain unanswered. As his family tries to build a new life, Arthur must face the ghosts he left behind and the secrets that Bent Road has kept buried for two decades.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, suspense, mystery, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: coming-of-age, family-drama, returning-home
Setting: Bent Road, Detroit
Period: 1967, 1980s
384 pages · Pocket Book · POINTS
Content warnings: racism