Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | FICTION AND | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION AND | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Winter has come to Route 117, a remote road through the high desert of Utah trafficked only by eccentrics, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. Local truck driver Ben Jones, still in mourning over a heartbreaking loss, is just trying to get through another season of treacherous roads and sudden snowfall without an accident. But then he finds a mute Hispanic child who has been abandoned at a seedy truck stop along his route, far from civilization and bearing a note that simply reads " Please Ben. Watch my son. His name is Juan" And then at the bottom, a few more hastily scribbled words. "Bad Trouble. Tell no one.".
Despite deep misgivings, and without any hint of who this child is or the grave danger he's facing, Ben takes the child with him in his truck and sets out into an environment that is as dangerous as it is beautiful and silent. From that moment forward, nothing will ever be the same. Not for Ben. Not for the child. And not for anyone along the seemingly empty stretch of road known as Route 117.
Author Notes
JAMES ANDERSON was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He is a graduate of Reed College, and received his MFA in creative writing from Pine Manor College. His first novel was The Never-OpenDesert Diner . His short fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines, including The Bloomsbury Review, New Letters, Solstice Magazine,
and others. He currently divides his time between Colorado and Oregon.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Anderson's atmospheric but implausible sequel to 2015's The Never-Open Desert Diner, veteran trucker Ben Jones learns at the Stop 'n' Gone Truck Stop outside Price, Utah, that Pedro, a tire man he knows slightly, has left his apparently traumatized son, Juan, who looks to be five or six, and the boy's fiercely protective dog in Ben's care. Ben feels he has no choice but to take Juan and the dog with him. Things quickly go from bad to worse: a speeding semi almost obliterates him and his precious cargo; his nomadic preacher friend, John, who hauls a life-size crucifixion cross up and down the highway, is left critically injured by a hit-and-run that may not have been an accident; and someone draws a gun on him for what will prove the first of several times during the next couple of days. Ben's efforts to protect the child and the dog plunge him into increasing peril, but even after a harrowing climax the reader may well feel as though the journey has been, in the trucker's words, "back and forth between no place and nowhere." Arresting desert vistas and distinctive characters leave a lasting impression. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Following The Never-Open Desert Diner (2016), Ben Jones is back behind the wheel of his rig on Route 117, a desolate road in the Utah desert. It's winter, and the road is icy and fraught with many perils, including a fellow trucker on the run from the Highway Patrol in a red cab-over, last seen barreling past an inspection station at an estimated 100 mph. Jones has taken on two passengers: a mute young Hispanic child and a large white dog he finds abandoned in the freezing cold at a seedy truck stop. There are more evil doings at the diner and up and down the highway. Many of the eccentric and ornery characters from the first book make another appearance, and Ben puts himself in harm's way when bad things start happening to them. Anderson's lyrical prose brings a forgotten corner of the world to life, and the authentic narrative does the same for Jones. Recommended for fans of William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor and Craig Johnson's Walt Longmire.--Murphy, Jane Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHEN A character in a crime novel snaps and kills a child, it's usually a mother stressed beyond endurance. In Leila Slimani's unnerving cautionary tale, THE PERFECT NANNY (Penguin, paper, $16), subtly translated by Sam Taylor, we know from the outset that it's a beloved and trusted nanny who murders the two children in her care. That's pretty radical for a domestic thriller; but what's more remarkable about this unconventional novel (which was awarded France's prestigious Prix Goncourt) is the author's intimate analysis of the special relationship between a mother and a nanny. Myriam and Paul, the Parisian couple who hire Louise to help care for their son and daughter, are delighted to discover that she's "a miracle worker" who cleans, reorganizes the household and even cooks delicious meals. "Nothing rots, nothing expires" in Louise's kitchen. At first, they bask in their unexpected comfort, "like spoiled children, like purring cats." Much too late, Myriam realizes that the new nanny may not be entirely benevolent: "She is Vishnu, the nurturing divinity, jealous and protective." But already Louise "has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her." Despite Myriam's fears, Louise has no intention of replacing her as the woman of the house; rather, in her pathological loneliness, the nanny increasingly fantasizes that she has become a de facto member of the family. Slimani writes devastatingly perceptive character studies. Dropping their children at day care, the mothers are "rushed and sad," the children "little tyrants." She also raises painful questions. Could Myriam be projecting onto her nanny her own forbidden desire to be free of her children and their insatiable needs? ("They're eating me alive," she thinks.) Is there an element of racial prejudice in the Moroccanborn Myriam's attitude toward her French nanny? Is Louise's pitiless act the transference of her forbidden feelings about her privileged employer? One thing is clear: Loneliness can drive you crazy, and extreme loneliness can make you homicidal. THE INTENSE thrills of Thomas Perry's THE BOMB MAKER (Mysterious Press, $26) are almost unbearable. After sweating through a scene in which a member of the Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Squad narrowly escapes a lethal explosion, we're knocked back by the loss of 14 team technicians - half the squad - who are blown to smithereens. "Bombs were acts of murder," Perry writes, but "they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you." Dick Stahl, who steps in to head the depleted squad, doesn't get the joke, but he goes mano a mano with the abominable riddler, whose clear intention is to destroy those who respond to his devilishly clever booby traps. There seems to be no pattern to the placement of these "welldesigned, insidious and psychologically astute" devices, which turn up at a gas station, a school cafeteria and a hospital ward. Before they go off, the tension is killing. And when they do, the damage is spectacular. DRIVING UP AND DOWN Utah's desolate Route 117 with the trucker Ben Jones is an education. LULLABY ROAD (Crown, $26), James Anderson's second novel (after "The Never-Open Desert Diner"), introduces us to more of the "desert rats, hardscrabble ranchers and other assorted exiles" who choose to live off the grid and depend on Ben's Desert Moon Delivery Service for food and water and the occasional luxury, like soap. Some of Ben's customers are deep thinkers like Roy Cuthbert, who suggests holding Second Amendment Days ("with a huge gun show and fast-draw competition") to save the town of Rockmuse from sinking into the desert sands. Other, more desperate people, like Pedro, the tire man at the Stop 'n' Gone Truck Stop, trust him to transport a small child and a large dog in his 28-foot tractortrailer rig. Ben is nothing if not a decent man, and Anderson rewards him with a deadly adventure and the most poetic prose this side of Salt Lake City. KAREN ELLIS'S A MAP OF THE DARK (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26) is a valiant, if unsuccessful attempt to contain an intensely personal narrative within the structure of a traditional police procedural. Special Agent Elsa Myers of the F.B.I.'s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment division is assigned to the case of 17-year-old Ruby Haverstock, who went missing after finishing her shift at a cafe in Queens. Even from the little we learn about her, Ruby seems like a clever, resourceful girl. (As her kidnapper drags her off to a cave in the woods, she drops several rings to create a trail of clues.) For some reason that isn't made clear, this particular case awakens Myers's memories of mistreatment at the hands of her unstable and abusive mother. That may shed some light on the agent's secret habit of cutting herself with the Swiss Army knife she keeps with her at all times. ("The puncture of metal, the breaking of skin, comes with a rush of sensation that assures you that you are real after all.") But it doesn't begin to explain how she can cut herself until she bleeds and still handle such a demanding and dangerous job. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Kirkus Review
"We are the trouble we seek," says Ben Jones, the half-Jewish, half-Native American trucker who narrates this book. That seems especially true of the lost souls traversing the bleak landscape of this harrowing, dryly antic novel.If it's possible for a stretch of state highway to be a heartbreak house with asphalt and white lines, then Utah's Route 117, as depicted in this moody, antic thriller, certainly qualifies. Among the more heartbroken of its transient regulars is Ben, who, as this novel begins, is still working his way through the savagely jolting and deadly events chronicled in Anderson's debut, The Never-Open Desert Diner (2016). With another harsh winter creeping up on the high desert, Ben is even deeper into his routine of delivering necessities to those living along the highwaybut he can't fill his gas tank without trouble finding him. In this case, it's a child and an "indeterminate mix of husky and German shepherd" abandoned at a truck stop with a note begging him to take care of what's eventually identified as a little girl. Ben doesn't get very far in the swirling snow and high winds with his new passengers before another tractor-trailer truck nearly runs him off the highway. And that's only the beginning of Ben's bad week, during which he's enmeshed in the messy lives of friends like Ginny, the red-and-purple-haired Walmart clerk and college student who implores him to add her infant to his passenger list, and John, the itinerant preacher whose ritual of carrying a large wooden cross along the highway isn't stopped by inclement weatheruntil a hit-and-run driver slams him to death's door. In addition to these and other myriad perils, there's a trigger-happy convenience-store clerk, a mysterious circus truck, and, lurking in the distance, the surly, enigmatic Walt, who owns and occupies the vacant diner that haunts Ben's crowded memories.At times, Anderson seems to take on more than he can chew, but the narrator's dolefully observant and engagingly self-deprecating voice holds together this cluttered tale. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this follow-up to The Never-Open Desert Diner, Anderson takes readers on another trip down Utah's Route 117 and revisits many of the characters who depend on truck driver Ben Jones not only for supplies but also for solace. Ben faces challenges: the weather, reckless drivers, dark memories of sadness and loss, and an unknown, unidentifiable evil presence that invades the desert solitude. There is also the mystery of the young Hispanic child abandoned at a truck stop whom Ben has been asked to protect. Unraveling that story and attempting to find the child's father takes Ben, as well as the community of solitary souls along Route 117, into a violent world of unspeakable horrors. The action is nonstop, and the plot twists are heart-pounding. Anderson's vivid prose gives a sense of the vastness that is the desert he so brilliantly describes-it is an amazing use of language to create mood and feeling. -VERDICT Fans of Anderson's first installment of this series will devour this book and long for another visit with the residents along Route 117. [See Prepub Alert, 8/2/17.]--Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community College, Mt. Carmel © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 A momentary silence was all that marked the passing of summer into winter. After living most of my almost forty years in the high desert of Utah, twenty driving a truck, I had come to the conclusion there were really only two seasons: hot and windy and cold and windy. Everything else was just a variation on those two. Late in the evening I lay half-awake in my single bed and knew the silence meant the season had changed. I like to think maybe I know a thing or two about silence. Real silence is more than the absence of sound: it is something you feel. A few heartbeats earlier a steady wind scattered the leftover sounds from evening--a car passing, neighbors talking from behind closed doors, somewhere a dog barking--all the usual muffled racket of nearby lives. Then there was nothing, nothing at all, as if the desert and everyone in it had vanished and left nothing behind but an indifferent starless light. By four a.m., when I begin my workday, winter was on its hind legs and waiting. It took longer than usual to get to the transfer station and load my truck. The time was well after five o'clock when I finally got under way, driving cautiously through the light snow and ice in the predawn darkness. My heater was blowing full blast and the bitter, dry cold hijacked the warmth from my body and cracked my skin into something akin to a hardpan lakebed. My last routine stop was to take on diesel. I had missed the morning fueling rush, if there had been one, by being either a few minutes early or a few minutes late. All of the pump islands were empty. Cecil Boone was the manager of the Stop 'n' Gone Truck Stop on US 191 just outside of Price, Utah. The Stop 'n' Gone was a cheapo independent, stuck out alone in a patch of sand and broken rock, with the rundown look of a place that must have low prices because it didn't have much of anything else. Cecil was a stubby, sour man in his fifties. We were inside the small convenience store and Cecil was behind the register. In the eight or so years I had been buying my diesel there, nearly every weekday, I had never seen the man smile before that snowy October morning. There are probably lots of reasons to smile. Most folks do it every day. In my line of work I don't see many smiles and I probably don't give many, not even to myself. That was the way it should be. No one wants to glance up and see a truck driver grinning. My sense is that such a sight is bound to have an unsettling effect on the ordinary driver. I was quickly sorting through the reasons people smile--humor, warmth, trivial annoyance--and coming up short. It was just Cecil and me--and Cecil's smile. I paid for my diesel. "Someone left something for you on Island Eight," he said. I asked him what. "None of my business. Just make sure you take it with you when you leave." Cecil walked back toward the door of his cluttered office. "Eight," he said over his shoulder. I thought I heard a small laugh before he closed the door. It might have been gas. My tractor-trailer rig was parked at Island 2. Eight was on the far west side of the truck stop. I stood for a minute and looked out the window at the blowing snow. Not much accumulation. Ice beneath a thin dusting of white. The fine flakes eddied around the high arc lights of the truck stop like a scene from a low-rent snow globe. Outside I paused and glanced in the direction of Island 8. Nothing I could see. The inside of my cab was warming up. I was in favor of getting on the road and starting my day. Who would leave something for me at a truck stop? It couldn't be that important or valuable or it wouldn't have been left outside. Maybe this was a joke. I could take a joke. Anytime. Later. Cecil's smile floated in and out of the restless snow beyond my windshield. That smile, if that's what you wanted to call it, seemed to dare me to swing by Island 8 and take a peek. No matter what Cecil said, I felt no obligation to take it with me. I jockeyed my twenty-eight-foot tractor-trailer rig in a wide turn and slowly approached Island 8. What looked like a short pile of clothes was stacked against a battered trash can--nothing that couldn't wait, or be ignored entirely. I began to pull through the cluster of canopied fuel pumps and kept an eye on my side mirror to be sure I cleared the concrete stanchions that protected the pumps from idiots in motorhomes and U-Hauls and once, years ago, when I was hungover, me. The clothes stirred and launched a small wisp of snow into the wind. I set the brakes and jogged back toward the island, slipping on the ice a couple times and barely managing to stay upright. A large white dog was tightly curled into itself and raised its long nose up an inch or two as I approached. Its pink eyes followed me and then settled intently between my shoulders and head--my neck. No growl or bared teeth. This was a dog that meant business--and it knew its business well. I stopped several feet away and the two of us discussed the situation in silence. Our conversation ended when the dog uncurled and stood, stretched, and shook the powdery snow off its fur. Its thick coat was still white. Not just white, an impossible luminous white that made the animal almost a blurred white shadow floating inside the blowing snow. The dog was also larger than I first thought, an indeterminate mix of husky and German shepherd, with maybe a little timber wolf thrown in for good measure. A pair of black, almond-shaped eyes rose like timid fish to the surface of the furry white lake. They stared at me from behind the dog's back. A small child. I fell twice in my hurried march back to the building. The soles of my old Ariat roper boots were as thin as paper and just as smooth. Leaving a little kid out in a snowstorm was just the sort of thing that would draw a smile from Cecil. This was his idea of a joke. A five-car pile-up on the interstate or a grisly hit-and-run might give him laughing fits. I was limping badly when I reached the door. It was locked. A hastily written sign was taped at eye-level, my eye-level, about six foot four in boots. back in ten minutes. Somehow I doubted Cecil would be back until I was well down the road. I had a schedule to keep. He knew I wouldn't wait, not ten minutes. Not even five. After pounding on the door and yelling Cecil's name, I kicked at the bottom of the heavy glass. My reward was another fall. If Cecil was inside he was determined not to show himself. I walked carefully back to Island 8. The dog hadn't moved; the kid still huddled behind it. The dog moved aside and fully revealed the child, a young boy. This was permission to move closer. I guessed the boy's age at five or six, brown complexion and straight, black hair cut in the shape of a bowl. He was dressed only in jeans and a short-sleeved white collared shirt. His tennis shoes looked new, the kind with blinking red lights in the heels. A piece of paper was pinned to his shirt. I took a step closer without taking my eyes off either the dog or the boy. Neither seemed afraid, though they keenly gauged my progress. The boy never took his dark eyes from mine, not even when I reached down and gently unpinned what I assumed was a note. PLEASE BEN. BAD TROUBLE. MY SON. TAKE HIM TODAY. HIS NAME IS JUAN. TRUST YOU ONLY. TELL NO ONE. PEDRO. The note was printed in block letters with a black marker that had bled through the flimsy paper. It was a cash register receipt. There was no mention of the dog, without which the boy might well have frozen to death. I read through it several times. Pedro was the tire man at the truck stop. The tire shop was in an old metal building hunched behind the truck stop where the crumbling concrete turned to gravel. We were friendly in the way strangers who infrequently came in contact with each other were friendly: I knew his name and he knew mine. Not much else. The month before I had bought new tires. They gave me a hell of a deal on brand-name rubber. Pedro and I engaged in the usual bullshit banter. He had never mentioned he had a son. I hadn't felt shortchanged by not knowing much about him. Why he would turn to me when he was in trouble, any kind of trouble, especially entrusting me with his son, didn't make any sense. I did not feel particularly honored by his trust. My options were limited. Call the local cops or take him with me. If I called the police I'd have to wait for them to arrive. When they arrived there would be questions, most of which I wouldn't be able to answer and Cecil wouldn't be much help, if he showed up at all. When you tell cops "I don't know," all they ever hear is "I won't tell you," which in my experience always made for long and frustrating conversations. Leaving the boy with Cecil was not an option. My guess was that Pedro had left him inside and Cecil, the sick asshole, put the kid and his dog outside in a snowstorm just for giggles. The second option had only a single downside, and it was a big one--I just didn't want to babysit a damned little kid in my truck all day--or his dog, which I wasn't going to take under any circumstances. I jerked a long-handled squeegee out of its canister and flung it through the snow in the general direction of the office. It was a pathetic gesture. The squeegee fell way short of hitting the side of the building. The icy apron of Island 6 took it without a sound. The expressions on the face of the boy and the dog did not change. I cautiously picked up the boy and carried him to my cab and opened the door. The dog scampered past me and quickly made itself comfortable on the warm floorboard. I sat the boy on my passenger seat and grabbed two big handfuls of white fur and readied myself to yank the animal out of my cab. I would have done just that if not for those pink eyes. Those eyes asked me one simple question: How badly do you want to keep your hands? I answered by letting loose of the fur and slamming the door. Excerpted from Lullaby Road: A Novel by James Anderson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.