Lexi Baill breaks your heart when you first meet her. She's only fourteen, but she's been "in the system" her entire life, with a drug addict mother who would flit in and out, and then Lexi would be left to go back to another foster home. She had been in seven foster homes in five years, six different schools. But, she was a child who always had hope and faith in the future. It was only when her mother died that Lexi finally found family. Her Great-aunt Eva lived in a small trailer in Washington, but she took her in, and made sure she was sent to a good high school. That's where Lexi met Mia Farraday. Mia was the shy twin sister of Zach, the most popular boy in school, although she had no friends. Lexi's friendship with Mia brought Lexi a family she never knew, while Mia found a best friend who would always be there for her.
Jude Farraday was a helicopter mom. Since her husband, Miles, was a surgeon, she could spend time at school with her twins, carpooling, chaperoning trips, acting as class mother. Mia needed a friend so much that Jude took Lexi under her wing. By their senior year in high school, the girls were inseparable. However, their class differences were obvious in their future plans. Lexi worked at the ice cream shop, struggling to get together money to go to the local college while Jude pushed Zach to accompany Mia to USC, following Jude's plans for their future. But, Jude Farraday can't control every second of her children's lives, and she's unprepared for the place Lexi occupies in the lives of both her children. One bad decision will destroy plans, lives, and the hopes of Lexi and the Farradays.
How do you recover from tragedy? Hannah shows the burden it places on survivors, the guilt, and the pain. Six years later, the repercussions of a loss on Night Road still haunt the people who can't move past that event. It's a story that will tear at your heart. You can only admire Lexi Baill and her courage. It will take a lonely little girl, and a young woman who remembers what it was like to be lost and alone, without a mother, to find hope, and glimpses of the future, after the loss on Kristin Hannah's Night Road.
Kristin Hannah's website is www.kristinhannah.com
Night Road by Kristin Hannah. St. Martin's Press. ©2011. ISBN 9780312364427 (hardcover), 400p.
*****
FTC Full Disclosure - The publicist sent me a copy of the book in hopes I would review it.
