November Road

This is a historical road novel (set in the 1960s) that sneaks up on you. It starts out slowly enough and then suddenly characters are on collision courses both with one another and with historical events that still resonate today. It's reminiscent of Amor Towles, Michael Cunningham, and Beatriz Williams in both style and the richness of the period setting--and just as satisfying as the best from each of those writers.

November Road, for me, is a book of people. Each character struggles with morality in their own way.

Frank Guidry, the central character, is a fixer, and sometimes a little more if it means saving himself. Guidry’s big, easy life in New Orleans is about to change. He knows it instinctively, he’s in danger, and he has to run. Charlotte Roy must also run to take her two young daughters and flee from an alcoholic husband and a suffocating life.

They meet on the road, and Guidry finds what he’s always been looking for in Charlotte, a reason to live,… show more.

You would not think that a book about a sleazy (but incredibly handsome) man being chased by a hired killer would be an inspiring book about second chances, but it is. The story is set in November 1963. Frank Guidry is inadvertently involved in the Kennedy assassination and the powers that be want to shut him up. He’s running from a killer and he runs into Charlotte Roy, a young mother who, with her two daughters, is fleeing her alcoholic husband. They both have a lot of internal demons to grapple with, but along the way there’s a lot of… show more.