Q Road

Campbell's book revolves around a quirky cast of characters in rural Michigan: foul-mouthed, child-bride Rachel, her husband George, and her best friend, asthmatic, 12-year-old David, to name a few. The story itself is not particularly remarkable, but Campbell's writing makes you want to not miss a moment.Rifle-toting Rachel, abandoned by her distant, fur-trapping mother, marries the much older George Harland, a down-on-his-luck... Read Full Review

Q Road is not for the faint of heart. Author Bonnie Jo Campbell takes you down a Michigan side-road to a rough-hewn world of brutally flawed characters. No sparkling wits, no dreamy introverts here; rather these misshapen and misfortuned people struggle through each and every day. Cantankerous and eccentric, they are driven to alienate kin and neighbors alike. Victims of violent acts of their past, broken marriages, rural... Read Full Review

While I picked up this book because of the story's location, (outside Kalamazoo, Michigan where my daughter lives,) I was immediately drawn into this rural world peopled by an array of eclectic and sympathetic characters struggling with the onslaught of family farms being devoured by development. The plot revolves around one man's attempt to continue farming against the odds (and fate itself.) While the theme is both grand... Read Full Review

It would be wrong of me not to plug this book, since I canremember nothing in the last couple of years that is bothstirring and still steeped in mystery. This book glows with the land-bound energy of thousands of lives, and not a wooly bear orblack eyed susan can do anything if not reverberate against the template of all that human despair and exhilaration in the name of survival. Larry Brown and Chris Offutt are peers,... Read Full Review