Rush Home Road

Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

Rush Home Road is another first novel book. I am SO amazed at the number of really good first authors out there. Gives me great hope for wonderful reading in my retirement!

Rush Home Road is the story of a five year old little girl, Sharla Cody, who is dumped off at Addie Shadd’s small trailer in Chatham, Ontario Canada by her mother. Addie is about seventy years older than Sharla and is fearful that she cannot keep the young girl for long. When Sharla comes to live with her, Addie begins to enter the stage of reliving her life in her mind often, including talking out loud to some of the people in her life who have passed on. Although she has not returned to her home town of Rusholme since she was herself a child, she remembers all that happened to her there and why she thought that she could never return. The author, Lori Lansens is from Chatham and reported in her Reading Group Guide that the southern part of Ontario was a terminus on the Underground Railroad. In the book, Rusholme is a town settled by fugitive slaves from the US seeking freedom.

There are a lot of different themes in this story, and the author tied them all together well. It is basically a book about love and forgiveness, but there are also significant themes of “lost children”, racial attitudes, and death, as Addie tells her story. It is a good story and a book worth reading. I did feel like the end tied up a little too neatly and quickly, but overall, I recommend the book for light reading.