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Tawni O'Dell

Author of Back Roads

12 Works 2,992 Members 110 Reviews 9 Favorited

About the Author

Works by Tawni O'Dell

Back Roads (1999) 1,869 copies
Coal Run (2004) 361 copies
Sister Mine (2007) 269 copies
Fragile Beasts (2010) 177 copies
One of Us (2014) 167 copies
Angels Burning (2016) 143 copies
Uno de los nuestros (2018) 1 copy

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Danny Boyle was the son of a mine worker and a mentally I’ll mother that had been convicted of killing her one week old daughter. He left that mining town in Pennsylvania. That mining town also had a dark, famous history involving the Nellies who were executed by hanging. Danny goes back to that town to check on his grandfather who had been sick.

Walker Dawes owns the mine and the original Walker Dawes was the one to have the Nellies executed. His daughter Scarlett shows up and murder happens in that small mine town. Eventually, the truth about what really happened to Danny’s baby sister comes out.

The only problem I had was the switching between Scarlett and Danny’s point of view though it was necessary. It wasn’t thriller quality to me but it was very engaging and the characters believable though some very superficial and seemed to exist as means of moving the plot.

A recommend
… (more)
 
Flagged
pacbox | 20 other reviews | Jul 9, 2022 |
Not as much of a thriller as a character study in a small Pennsylvania town. It was a good read, just not super unique in story line or outcome.
½
 
Flagged
sbenne3 | 20 other reviews | Sep 16, 2021 |
This book had me lying awake with my chest aching for an hour after the last page. It was haunting. Devastating. Real.

I thought I had it all figured out, but O'Dell pulled the rug out from under my feet more than once.

Some reviewers claimed to not 'get' Harley as a character or called him too violent or unlikable... To that I say, sometimes a story is just too ugly for people not to look away from it. If nothing else, these characters were tragically, gutwrenchingly human.

Put yourself in the shoes of a 19 year old boy who has been abused his entire life. Rather than being granted the freedom of adulthood, he's trapped to care for his 3 younger sisters and virtually abandoned by the system.

Rage becomes natural as Harley fights to keep them alive and striving towards normal, working two dead end jobs just to put cereal and nuked hotdogs on the table.

The girls are equally and uniquely broken by their experiences, so there is no comfort to be found in each other and all four suffer because of it.

Its easy to forget about a few kids out in the backwoods of a Pennsylvania coal mining town. Certainly easier than having to watch. That seems to be one thing we can all agree on, because there are no spectators as their home and the very fabric of their relationships begin to decay.

Except, maybe, for the married woman next door, who sees Harley's struggle and shows him the first human tenderness hes experienced since his mother.

O'Dell doesn't wrap this one up into a neat little package for us and save the day. She says - Tough luck. This is real life, and sometimes real life isn't good or fair in the end.
… (more)
 
Flagged
AshleyHope | 40 other reviews | Mar 18, 2021 |
This book had me lying awake with my chest aching for an hour after the last page. It was haunting. Devastating. Real.

I thought I had it all figured out, but O'Dell pulled the rug out from under my feet more than once.

Some reviewers claimed to not 'get' Harley as a character or called him too violent or unlikable... To that I say, sometimes a story is just too ugly for people not to look away from it. If nothing else, these characters were tragically, gutwrenchingly human.

Put yourself in the shoes of a 19 year old boy who has been abused his entire life. Rather than being granted the freedom of adulthood, he's trapped to care for his 3 younger sisters and virtually abandoned by the system.

Rage becomes natural as Harley fights to keep them alive and striving towards normal, working two dead end jobs just to put cereal and nuked hotdogs on the table.

The girls are equally and uniquely broken by their experiences, so there is no comfort to be found in each other and all four suffer because of it.

Its easy to forget about a few kids out in the backwoods of a Pennsylvania coal mining town. Certainly easier than having to watch. That seems to be one thing we can all agree on, because there are no spectators as their home and the very fabric of their relationships begin to decay.

Except, maybe, for the married woman next door, who sees Harley's struggle and shows him the first human tenderness hes experienced since his mother.

O'Dell doesn't wrap this one up into a neat little package for us and save the day. She says - Tough luck. This is real life, and sometimes real life isn't good or fair in the end.
… (more)
 
Flagged
AshleyHope | 40 other reviews | Mar 18, 2021 |

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Statistics

Works
12
Members
2,992
Popularity
#8,531
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
110
ISBNs
108
Languages
5
Favorited
9

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