“This novel is sure to join the rich canon of Southern literature.” –Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of AugustFrom Pushcart Prize nominee Danny Johnson comes a powerful, lyrical debut novel that explores race relations, first love, and coming-of-age in North Carolina in the 1950s and ’60s. At eight years old, Raeford “Junebug” Hurley has known more than his share of hard … his share of hard lessons. After the sudden death of his parents, he goes to live with his grandparents on a farm surrounded by tobacco fields and lonesome woods. There he meets Fancy Stroud and her twin brother, Lightning, the children of black sharecroppers on a neighboring farm. As years pass, the friendship between Junebug and bright, compassionate Fancy takes on a deeper intensity. Junebug, aware of all the ways in which he and Fancy are more alike than different, habitually bucks against the casual bigotry that surrounds them–dangerous in a community ruled by the Klan.
On the brink of adulthood, Junebug is drawn into a moneymaking scheme that goes awry–and leaves him with a dark secret he must keep from those he loves. And as Fancy, tired of saying yes’um and living scared, tries to find her place in the world, Junebug embarks on a journey that will take him through loss and war toward a hard-won understanding.
At once tender and unflinching, The Last Road Home delves deep into the gritty, violent realities of the South’s turbulent past, yet evokes the universal hunger for belonging.
Advance praise for The Last Road Home
“In this intense and well?written debut novel, Danny Johnson probes deep into the cauldron of racial relations in the 1960’s South. The Last Road Home introduces an exciting new voice in Southern Literature.” –Ron Rash, author of Above the Waterfall
“In The Last Road Home, Danny Johnson evokes a South that in many ways may be gone, thank the Lord. Yet Johnson’s compelling and heartfelt rendering of Junebug and Fancy couldn’t be more charged and alive. The long dramatic arc of their deep and ever evolving relationship traces a time and a place giving way to change in violent fits and starts. Yet this is no sociological treatise. It’s a flesh and blood story about two people, who risk just about everything time and time again, for nothing more and nothing less than to love each other.” –Tommy Hays, author of In The Family Way
”The Last Road Home took me straight into the heart of a wounded boy who becomes a complicated man. By the end of this stunning novel, I felt I’d come to understand humans better than I had before, how we come to be the way we are: tender and full of fury. I don’t recall having such a reaction to a novel. Author Danny Johnson shrinks from nothing. I say: read it!” –Peggy Payne, author of Cobalt Blue
“Johnson’s moving novel beautifully portrays the ways in which his young characters struggle to overcome the history that has so fully shaped their lives.” –John Gregory Brown, author of Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
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Painted a picture very near to my memories of growing up during that time.
Thanks to Net Galley for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.
The Last Road Home is a heart breaking poignant coming of age novel that takes place in rural North Carolina in the years leading up the Civil Rights Movement. Set in a small farming town in the 1950’s where the klan is king…..this won’t be one of those feel good books. It’s a hard read, but written in such a powerful way you can’t put it down. And like all good books should, it will stay with you, even after you have read the last words and closed its pages.
Stellar writing and excellent character development, we’re giving this a 4 star
Kept me interested but ending/wrap up was a bit lackluster.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for a review copy. This is my honest opinion.
A wonderful read! This is the sort of book that stays with you long after you’ve finished it. This was well written and most definitely recommended.
No one could claim Junebug Hurley has had an easy life. Following a fairly hardscrabble start in rural North Carolina, he goes to live with grandparents when his parents are killed running moonshine. His grandparents’ closest neighbors are black sharecroppers; twins Fancy and Lightning quickly become Junebug’s best – and only – friends. The situation is fraught, particularly as they come of age in the Jim Crow south where each child must determine how best to face – or flee – the bias and violence that infuses everyday life.
The Last Road Home, if I’m honest, is middling fiction. The story is fine, the characters are fine, there’s nothing too much wrong, and yet. I’ve had a hard time putting my finger on the pulse of what left me less than completely satisfied. I think I’ve got it: in the end, I think Danny Johnson tries to do too much. The dichotomy between the urban cities withe their guns, drugs, and unrest and the mule-drawn tobacco farms left me with a case of whiplash.
Similarly, the last, and shortest, part of the book that covers Junebug’s time in Vietnam felt too disconnected from the rest of the book. Perhaps that was Johnson’s intent. Perhaps the disconnect was intended as a literary device to signal to readers the extent of the disconnect between soldier and civilian. If so, it’s hard to criticize the intent. In the end, though, it left me feeling that I was reading two novellas, neither of which was as fully developed as it could have been.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2018/04/the-last-road-home.html)
Too slow for me.
Excellent story line – moved along at a good pace.
Good character development, very believable.
I felt empathetic and sad for them . Certainly wanted to keep reading.