Night Road by Kristin Hannah

If you think Kristin Hannah played with your emotions with Winter Garden or Firefly Lane, or any of her other novels, wait until you read Night Road. Her latest novel will totally wreak havoc with your emotions.

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.

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah - An Update & a Giveaway

Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden will be released in trade paperback tomorrow.  If you're still working on plans for this year's book discussion group, you might want to take a look at this book.  In fact, here's a link to an excerpt from the book, to give you a taste. 

 http://www.kristinhannah.com/content/books_winter_garden.php?id=Excerpt

There's a discussion guide available with the book as well, but don't read it if you haven't read the book.  There are spoilers in the guide.  http://www.kristinhannah.com/content/books_winter_garden.php?id=Discussion%20Guide

You can even watch Kristin Hannah discuss the book.  http://www.kristinhannah.com/content/books_winter_garden.php?id=Video 

And, you could get the chance to have Hannah speak to your book group via speakerphone.  http://www.kristinhannah.com/content/book_clubs.php?id=Signup%20Form

I reviewed the book last February when it came out in hardcover, and I thought I'd share my review.

"In times of trouble, Meredith did chores, Nina took photos, and Mom cooked. The one thing the Whitson women never did was talk." Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden is the story of two daughters, struggling to understand their mother. They may never understand themselves, if they don't understand the woman who never seemed to love them.


Meredith did everything she could to impress her mother, but it took a play when she was twelve to disabuse her of any idea she would ever please her. She wrote a play, and performed it with her sister, Nina, and the neighbor, Jeff, basing it on one of her mother's Russian fairy tales. When her mother angrily interrupted, Meredith was humiliated, and unforgiving. She gave up on trying to win her mother's love. Nina continued to push a little longer, but she finally surrendered to the futility.

Twenty-eight years later, Meredith is married to Jeff, has two adult daughters, runs the family orchard, and lives down the road from her parents. Nina ran as far as she could, and keeps running, as a successful photographer in war zones and scenes of human crisis. And, she finds herself afraid to return the love of a good man, afraid to trust. It takes a family crisis to bring her home, the heart attack of their beloved father. Evan Whitson was the one who held the family together, loving his wife, and acting as the intermediary between Anya and her daughters. Evan was the only one who could actually communicate with his cold, Russian wife. And, despite his death bed request that his daughters try to understand her, and force her to tell that fairy tale of the peasant girl and the prince, Meredith and Nina don't know if they'll ever be a family again. They never understood their mother. When their father died, they realized, "He was home, the very heart of them. How would they stand life without him?"

It appears that Anya never will tell her daughters the truth, turning only to her winter garden, where she sits and mourns the man she loved. As Meredith's whole world falls apart around her, Nina is convinced that fairy tale might be the only thing that can save the family. If she has to push, in her usual style, she will. Neither woman understands the woman who raised them. Are there secrets to her life in that fairy tale, secrets that could save the Whitson women?

The author of Firefly Lane and True Colors has written another powerful story of misunderstanding, family love, and strong women. It's a story of women trying to discover who they are, when they don't know their own family stories. And, it's a fascinating story that weaves fairy tales into reality, fairy tales that don't always have the expected endings.

Kristin Hannah is a master at creating worlds and characters. Anya's winter garden is as cold and unforgiving as the story she eventually tells her family. Hannah prepares readers for it with the opening paragraph. "On the banks of the mighty Columbia River, in this icy season when every breath became visible, the orchard called Belye Nochi was quiet....As temperatures plummeted and color drained from land and sky, the whitened landscape caused a kind of winter blindness, one day became indistinguishable from the next. Everything froze, turned fragile." That paragraph beautifully illustrates the Whitson family story - frozen, fragile, with the color drained. Winter Garden is Kristin Hannah's family fairy tale, a gift to readers.

Kristin Hannah's website is http://www.kristinhannah.com/

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah. St. Martin's Press, ©2010. ISBN 9780312364120 (hardcover), 400p.
Paperback ISBN is 9780312663155.



And, even better, I have the chance to give away two copies of Winter Garden.  If you would like to win a copy email me at lholstine@yahoo.com with the subject line, "Win Winter Garden."  Send me your name and mailing address.  Entrants from the U.S. only, please. 

The contest will close on Thursday, Jan. 6 at 6 PM MT, and I'll pick the winners, using a random number generator.  Good luck!

FTC Full Disclosure - The publicist is supplying the two copies for the book giveaway.