November Road

With the assassination of JFK as a backdrop, author Lou Berney, who won an Edgar Award for his earlier novel The Long and Faraway Gone, brings together two characters whose paths would normally never have crossed. Frank Guidry is a fixer for mob boss, Carlos Marcello, and living the good life in New Orleans. When Guidry slowly realizes that, in following orders from Marcello, he has inadvertently played a role in setting up the assassination, and that everyone connected to the deed is quickly disappearing, he makes a run for it. He heads to Las Vegas, where another dangerous and unpredictable organized crime boss--who hates Marcello--will hopefully help Guidry disappear before Marcello's top assassin, Barone, catches up to him. Along the way, Guidry stops to help a woman, with her two daughters and an ancient dog, after her car breaks down. After all, what better disguise for a single man on the run than a make-believe family. But before he knows it, Guidry has been beguiled by smart and funny Charlotte Roy and her daughters. Charlotte is also on the run--from an alcoholic, ne'er-do-well husband in Oklahoma. She wants a better life for herself and her daughters and is taking a chance on a distant aunt in California. Guidrey begins to think that maybe they can make their new life together, but can he convince Charlotte and can they get away in time when everyone is looking to cash in on Guidry's demise?

Booklist gives this a starred review, calling it "Pitch-perfect fiction...[that] easily reaches across the aisle separating thrillers and literary fiction." Kirkus says the book "Perfectly captures these few weeks at the end of 1963—all that was lost and all that lay tantalizingly and inevitably just beyond the horizon... Berney’s gentle, descriptive writing brilliantly reflects these times of both disillusionment and hope." The Washington Post calls it " both a road novel and a first-rate thriller" as well as "a surprising but credible love story." Their reviewer goes on to say, "Ultimately, the novel stands or falls on Berney’s ability to convince us that an amoral criminal is capable of changing so completely. November Road could easily have descended into sentimental cliches, but — thanks largely to the character of Charlotte — it never does." What do you think?