Bent Road
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Narrated by:
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Marguerite Gavin
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By:
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Lori Roy
About this listen
For 20 years, Celia Scott has watched her husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his sister Eve’s death. As a young man, Arthur fled his small Kansas hometown, moved to Detroit, married Celia, and never looked back. But when the 1967 riots frighten him even more than his past, he convinces Celia to pack up their family and return to the road he grew up on, Bent Road, and that same small town where Eve mysteriously died.
While Arthur and their oldest daughter slip easily into rural life, Celia and the two younger children struggle to fit in. Daniel, the only son, is counting on Kansas to make a man of him, since Detroit sure didn’t. Evie, the youngest and small for her age, hopes that in Kansas she will finally grow. Celia grapples with loneliness and the brutality of life and death on a farm.
And then a local girl disappears, catapulting the family headlong into a dead man’s curve.
On Bent Road, a battered red truck cruises ominously along the prairie; a lonely little girl dresses in her dead aunt’s clothes; a boy hefts his father’s rifle in search of a target; a mother realizes she no longer knows how to protect her children. It is a place where people learn that sometimes killing is the kindest way.
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In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart - one Black, one White; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager - fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel.
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Mostly Disappointing
- By Anjoli on 06-15-19
By: Minrose Gwin
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Unconditional
- A Novel
- By: Eva Marie Everson
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Samantha Crawford has a storybook life: she’s happily married, lives on a ranch where she keeps her beloved horse, and the stories she has written and illustrated since childhood have become popular books. When her husband Billy is killed in a senseless act of violence, Sam loses her faith and the will to live. But a sudden death-defying encounter with two children leads to a reunion with her old friend Papa Joe Bradford.
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excelent
- By susan on 11-15-12
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The Good Thief
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve-year-old Ren doesn't know who his parents were. He doesn't know who left him at St. Anthony's orphanage, or how he lost his left hand when still an infant. He is resigned to life without a family to call his own and terrified of the future. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents is enough to persuade the monks at the orphanage to release the boy. But is Benjamin really who he says he is?
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Close But No Cigar?
- By Andrew Moore on 10-03-09
By: Hannah Tinti
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The Beekeeper's Son
- Amish of Bee County, Book 1
- By: Kelly Irvin
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Phineas King knows better than to expect anything but shock and pity wherever he shows his face. Horribly scarred from the tragic accident that claimed his mother's life, he chooses to keep his distance from everyone, focusing his time and energy on the bees his family raises. So why does he start finding excuses to seek out Deborah Lantz, the beautiful new arrival in town?
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Book lover. No matter what forum.
- By J.C. on 06-21-15
By: Kelly Irvin
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The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
- By: Hannah Tinti
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife's hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother's mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that eventually spills over into his daughter's present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come.
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Odd choice for narrator
- By lindsey b. on 01-23-19
By: Hannah Tinti
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Bone Dust White
- By: Karin Salvalaggio
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Someone is knocking at the door to Grace Adams' house, and he won't stop. Grace thinks she knows who it is, but when she goes to her second floor window for a look she sees a woman she doesn't recognize. The woman isn't alone for long before a man emerges from the dark of the surrounding woods, stabs her, and leaves her for dead. Trying to help, Grace goes to the woman and is shocked to find that it's her mother Leanne - a woman who abandoned her 11 years before.
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at times hard to follow
- By cindy on 03-03-15
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The Last Ballad
- A Novel
- By: Wiley Cash
- Narrated by: Karen White, Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve times a week, 28-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. Two in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners - the newly arrived Goldberg brothers - white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for 72 hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has.
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Dryer than a popcorn fart
- By Scott Wilson on 02-11-18
By: Wiley Cash
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In the Bleak Midwinter
- By: Julia Spencer-Fleming
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Clare Fergusson, St. Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Miller's Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady"; she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot, and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown.
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Ice Cold Complex Small Town Police Procedural/Mystery
- By Sara on 12-27-14
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The Midwife
- By: Jolina Petersheim
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Graduate student Beth Winslow was sure she was ready to navigate the challenges of becoming a surrogate. But when early tests indicate possible abnormalities with the baby, Beth is unprepared for the parents' decision to end the pregnancy - and for the fierce love she feels for this unborn child. Desperate, she flees the city and seeks refuge at Hopen Haus, a home for unwed mothers deep in a Tennessee Mennonite community.
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Very touching story
- By Kathi on 06-22-14
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The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
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Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
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Descent
- By: Tim Johnston
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, R.C. Bray
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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From the day Caitlin vanishes the lives of her family members are irrevocably altered, each assuming blame for that day's tragic events. As the initial days of hope are replaced by weeks of anxiety and despair, they find themselves increasingly isolated, each wondering: Is she still alive? Will we ever know what happened?
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Even a Monkey Knows the Value of a Stick
- By tooonce72 on 01-09-15
By: Tim Johnston
What listeners say about Bent Road
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-26-12
Every Family Has Secrets
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes for the story which was interesting and moved along. The characters were interesting and grew as the story went on. It does take a ferw minutes to really get in to the story. Don't give up!! But I would say No I would not recommend because of the amount of profanity.
What did you like best about this story?
The son and how he grew in size and understanding.
Which scene was your favorite?
The end of the story.
If you could rename Bent Road, what would you call it?
Every Family Has Secrets
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mary McKinney
- 10-31-12
A Good Listen
This book crept up on me until I was quite engaged. Much more of a psychological portrait of a midwestern community than a murder mystery. The author did a good job of writing from multiple points of view. The climax goes on and on and on... I'm surprised that this book won an Edgar but I look forward to more novels from Roy.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Natalie
- 06-11-14
Boring Road--not much of a mystery
Would you try another book from Lori Roy and/or Marguerite Gavin?
Not from Lori Roy. Marguerite Gavin seems to be a fine narrator. I cannot believe that this book won an Edgar!
What was most disappointing about Lori Roy’s story?
The title, "Bent Road" is a misnomer. It should be straight and tedious road. It's very slow and tedious, plodding and repetitious, and the characters do not stand out in any way.
What does Marguerite Gavin bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I liked her voice and she did as well as she could with the narration. In the end, however, if the words are ploddingly tedious, the best narrator cannot make a book come alive.
What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
I was disappointed---even angry---because this book has won an Edgar Award for best first novel. I suppose it looks atmospherically at dysfunctional families in Kansas, but the view is too claustrophobic for the listener.
Any additional comments?
I have decided to abandon listening after slightly over 2 hours. I don't care about this book or the characters. I listen to books because I like to be gripped and curious and eager to return. When I dread the "listen" it means it's time to toss the book. If the first two hours do not pull me in, why continue with a purgatorial listen?
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- Lisa Martin
- 09-10-12
I couldnt finish it
I guess Kansas gothic is not my thing- Southern Gothic I love, but I couldn't relate to the characters- didn't like the setting
Very depressing
narrator very dead-pan- which probably works well for this story, but I just didn't like the story
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amanda Schaefer
- 12-19-12
Eh
You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?
I did finish it... so it was interesting enough to keep me reading. But I found it to be too predictable.
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- Byron
- 12-06-12
Great writing--not great story!!
This book was a conundrum for me. I read it because it won the Edgar award for the best first novel. Unfortunately, I felt it was more a statement on legalized abortions rather than a true mystery. Fortunately, the writing was descriptive and creative; unfortunately, I did not like---more like actively disliked---all the characters, even the children. This story was a lesson in bigotry, ignorance, meanness, and hatred. Hopefully, this talented author will choose a different storyline, with a few like able characters in her next book----fore, with this talent there needs to be many more future books!!!
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3 people found this helpful