Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell

405 pp. 
Signet Books, January 2001

When I lived in Florida, I used to daydream about moving to a small town up north. I envisioned a quiet place with no traffic, a town people lived in their entire lives, so unlike south Florida. I pictured this imaginary place in the autumn, with an iron-gray sky and leaves on the ground, and the sort of Halloween I knew as a child.

Last year I found myself living out that fantasy – well, nearly -- when my career brought us to southwestern Pennsylvania. Now I never want to leave.

There’s so much about this area that I love. The natural beauty of the hills and farms would appeal to anyone. So would the view looking east, with the graceful curve of Route 30 down towards Latrobe and the heavily-wooded Allegheny Mountains in the distance. But I’m also fascinated by the old buildings in the blighted downtowns of Latrobe and Greensburg, and the mining patch communities you come across unexpectedly. The evidence of coal mining is all around, for those who know what to look for.

That’s what led me to Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell. It’s set in the rural western Pennsylvania area around Black Lick, which is a real town in Indiana County less than an hour from my home. I thought that reading it would be a good way to soak up some of the atmosphere of the region. But I got much more than I bargained for.

In Back Roads, 20-year-old Harley Altmyer’s mother is serving a life sentence in prison for shooting their father. That leaves Harley responsible for taking care of himself and his three sisters. There’s poverty and tension in the household. Harley himself lacks a mother, and he needs a girlfriend. That's why O'Dell gives him his first sexual encounter with a woman that meets both needs. She's an older woman and the mother of three. Just to underscore that point, she wears a nightgown that says “World’s Greatest Mom” in the big sex scene.

I thought the book would tell the story of their affair. Later, as I got further into it, I thought the plot would be built around revealing the truth about the shooting. O’Dell does all that. But she also takes it much further. This is a book about the deep and lasting effects of domestic violence and parental failure. As Harley puts it: “The problem with trying to forget about shit is that you can’t forget it. Time does not heal all wounds.”

Back Roads can be read and enjoyed just for its plot. But O’Dell also layers in deeper meaning and symbolism with some very skillful writing. Harley and his sisters suffer through a childhood filled with fear and physical abuse. Harley wears his father’s coat and hat, symbols of the legacy of violence that he inherited from his father and carries with him still. His teenage sister’s compulsive need for comfort and safety leads her to casual sex with the wrong men. Harley has to abandon his dog. He fears that the dog will spend the rest of his life thinking he’s a bad dog, unable to understand why the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally turned his back on him.

Black Lick is a town named for salt licks that attract deer. But the salt is contaminated by coal deposits. The salt seeping up from underground may be killing them, like the secrets that Harley and his sisters have buried. In the end he has to confront his own self-deception.

I couldn’t understand why the book jacket blurbs described this book as humorous and hilarious. It’s about as bleak and tragic a story as I’ve read since Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, and the bleak, run-down mining community is a perfect setting. Back Roads actually affected me so strongly that I had to stop reading it at night. It got me so keyed up that I couldn’t sleep. Readers – especially men – shouldn’t be put off by the fact that this was an Oprah Book Club selection. It’s much more than a book aimed at pleasing women.

O’Dell’s second novel, Coal Run, was published in paperback earlier this year.

Links:

Review in The New York Times
Television interview
Author's website