Dark Roads

10 hrs. 42 min.

Language Russian

Author Toni O'Dell

Narrator Sergey Dadyko

Description

Harley ought to be studying in college, enjoying freedom, flirting, and dreaming about the future. Instead, he lives in a backwater town, looks after three sisters, and is burdened by mortgage debts and work from dawn till dark. His mother is behind bars, and his father has been murdered. Harley drives along dark evening country roads in his battered wreck—and there, astonishing surprises await him that will tear apart his heart and his life: the truth about his father, the truth about his mother, the truth about himself, and the truth about his love.

This troubling and surprisingly aching novel, full of sarcastic humor, has been compared to Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.” Like Holden, Salinger’s hero, Harley speaks frankly about his heightened perception of life, about its injustice, about how morality and decency mean nothing to him if they contradict love. It’s a novel about suppressed love, about devotion to family, about how even the darkest chapter of one’s life can be told with incredible, soul-stirring humor. A novel that says the most important thing in life is the heart.