Road Ends

From an acclaimed writer whose work invites comparisons to Elizabeth Strout, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford comes a brilliantly layered novel about self-sacrifice, family relationships, and the weight of our responsibility to those we love.

The New York Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge returns with a brilliantly layered novel about self-sacrifice, family relationships, and the weight of our responsibility to those we love.

Twenty-one-year-old Megan Cartwright has never been outside Struan, Ontario, a small town of deep woods and forbidding winters. The second oldest in a house with seven brothers, Megan is the caregiver, housekeeper, and linchpin of the family, but the day comes when she decides it’s time she had a life of her own. Leaving everything behind, Megan sets out for London.

In the wake of her absence, her family begins to unravel. Megan’s parents and brothers withdraw from one another, leading emotionally isolated lives while still under the same roof. Her oldest brother, Tom, reeling from the death of his best friend, rejects a promising future to move back home. Emily, her mother, rarely leaves the room where she dreamily dotes on her newborn son, while Megan’s four-year-old brother, Adam, is desperate for warmth and attention. And as time passes, Megan’s father, Edward, stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that his household is coming undone. Torn between her independence and family ties, Megan must make an impossible choice.

Nuanced, compelling, and searingly honest, Road Ends illuminates how we each make peace with the demands of love. Mary Lawson delivers compassion and heartbreak in equal measure in her most stunning novel to date.

Praise for Mary Lawson

Crow Lake

“Witty and poignant . . . The assurance with which Mary Lawson handles both reflection and violence makes her a writer to read and watch.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A touching meditation on the power of loyalty and loss . . . and on what it means to love, to accept, to succeed—and to negotiate fate’s obstacle courses.”—People

The Other Side of the Bridge

“[Lawson] draws her characters with unobtrusive humor and compassion, and she meets one of the fiction writer’s most difficult challenges: to portray goodness believably, without sugar or sentiment.”—The Washington Post Book World

“[Lawson] writes vividly of the joys and hardships of rural life, the harsh but sublime beauties of the natural world, as well as the thread connecting one generation to the next.”—Los Angeles Times