The Road Home by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen

About The Road Home

For Las Vegas widow Naomi, memories of a Pennsylvania Dutch childhood are a painful memory of abandoned roots and lost connections. She has long since reconciled herself to the shattered dream of what had once enticed her from her heritage; a tiny apartment thick with regret, the sad lives of her two sons, and her sole consolation: the friendship with daughter-in-law Ruth.

But when hard living claims both of Naomi's boys, she and Ruth turn the creaky Impala eastward in a desperate bid for hope and meaning. Thus begins a a cross-country odyssey that brings Naomi home to her old farm in Lancaster County, and to the values of a life once spurned. Although never having seen the East before, Ruth finds a home here too, among the slow cadences of Pennsylvania farm country. Can two women from different backgrounds and generations, overwhelmed with life and loss, find healing for wounds once thought too deep to heal?

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this modern day telling of the story of Ruth and Naomi. Ruth and Noami's journey is quite eventful and you never know what will happen next as they travel across country in their pilgrimage out East. This book is fairly long - almost 400 pages - but the story was quite engaging with bits of intrigue and romance mixed in, and the pages flew by.

(One trivial sidenote here - on their journey on I-70 through Kansas, Chapter 26 says their location is Hutchinson, Kansas, however, Hutchinson is not on I-70. It's close to an hour south of I-70. My guess is they were either in Hays or Salina.)