Also Available as a Time Warner Audio Book

A dazzling and heartbreaking debut about two unlikely people who
change each other's lives forever.

When Addy Shadd was a young girl living in Rusholme, she was taught
the history of her town, which was settled by fugitive slaves in
the 1800s. It was told to her like a storybook legend-and although
Addy is forced to leave her beloved home as a teenager, the place
will call to her for the rest of her life. She thinks of it as a
commandment: "Rush home, Addy Shadd. Thou shalt rush home." But the
stories and memories of Addy's past have been buried deep in her
seventy-year-old heart-memories that are by turns dark and
poignant, erotic and mysterious.

When five-year-old Sharla Cody is abandoned on Addy's trailer-park
doorstep, the old woman doesn't know if she is up to the task of
mothering the willful, curious child. But she takes the little girl
into her home, and Sharla opens a door to Addy's past—to
memories of the strawberry fields, the church graveyard, and the
tender crust of her Mama Laisa's apple pies. Addy remembers the
bootleggers, and life in Detroit City, and the shocking encounter
she witnessed in the shadows one unforgettable night. She remembers
her childhood sweetheart Chester Monk, and the three-layered white
cake decorated with candy rosebuds that she made for her little
girl, Chick. The past returns to Addy Shadd, and as she sits in her
trailer she can close her eyes and "see the county farms and city
streets and recall each season of death and rebirth." Somehow,
Sharla Cody helps Addy make sense of her long and hard life so she
can find forgiveness-and finally make the journey home again.

Lyrically written and brilliantly structured, RUSH HOME ROAD is an
unforgettable story about the redeeming power of love and
memory.

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