“A heady admixture of explosive plot and taut, burnished prose . . . Mesha Maren writes like a force of nature.” –Lauren Groff, author of Florida In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she’s sentenced to life in prison. When she’s released eighteen years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better … determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start. But what do you do with your past–and with a town and a family that refuses to forget, or to change?
Set within the charged insularity of rural West Virginia, Mesha Maren’s Sugar Run is a searing and gritty debut about making a break for another life, the use and treachery of makeshift families, and how, no matter the distance we think we’ve traveled from the mistakes we’ve made, too often we find ourselves standing in precisely the place we began.
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Jodi Mccarty is 35 years old and has just been released from prison. She was incarcerated for seventeen years after shooting her girlfriend in a jealous rage. Her plan is to head back to West Virginia where she will live on her grandmother’s land. On her journey, she makes a stop in Georgia to help her late girlfriend’s brother who grew up in an abusive home. There, she unexpectedly meets and quickly falls for a twenty-five-year-old drug addict named Miranda who is struggling to raise three young boys. Jodi collects the brother along with Miranda’s family and brings them all to West Virginia in hopes of a brighter future.
Upon her arrival, Jodi finds that her grandmother’s land is rundown and was sold while she was in prison. She also re-connects with her brother who lives on the edge as a heroin dealer. With the stigma of being a felon it is difficult to get a job while her brothers activities are putting her and friends at risk. Despite her desire to do better and change her ways, she finds limited choices are conspiring to push her back into her old life.
This is a debut novel by Mesha Maren. I loved ”Sugar Run” and was quickly drawn into the story because of the unique and gritty environment. The character’s development was complex and authentic as she teters between moving forward and backward .
From the beginning, I had the feeling that things were not going to turn out well for Jodi.
After serving eighteen years of a lifetime prison sentence, Jodi is free under supervised release. The jails are overcrowded, and she was only seventeen when convicted of killing her girlfriend Paula. She is given a bus ticket and sent into the world to report to her home district parole officer.
Jodi first takes a bus in the other direction, on a mission to fulfill Paula’s intent to save her younger brother Ricky from their abusive father. Along the way, Jodi meets Miranda, a needy young mother of three who latches onto Jodi like a drowning woman to a life raft.
This makeshift family–Miranda and her boys and Ricky–travel with Jodi to her home in the Appalachian mountains where she hopes they can find a refuge.
They move into Jodi’s grandmother’s abandoned cabin where she was raised. As the fracking operation pushes closer to them, Jodi’s brothers draw her into their illegal activities. Jodi falls for Miranda who slips back to her dependency on pills. And questions arise about Ricky’s past.
In Sugar Run by Mesha Maren, an ominous cloud compelled me to turn pages. Backstory chapters reveal Jodi’s story, and Miranda’s and Ricky’s stories are unraveled. It appears that their futures are mired in decisions made long ago.
The story ends with violence and heartache, but also with hope as Jodi realizes there is a future beyond home and it’s web to the past.
This is an impressive first novel with memorable characters and polished writing.
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.