Jack Reacher plans to follow the autumn sun on an epic road trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn't get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been - the town where his father was born. He thinks, what's one extra day? He takes the detour.
At the very same moment, close by, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians are trying to get to New York City to sell a treasure. They are stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. It's a strange place ... but it's all there is.
The next morning in the city clerk's office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He's told no one named Reacher ever lived in that town. He knows his father never went back. Now he wonders, was he ever there in the first place?
So begins another nail-biting, adrenaline-fuelled adventure for Reacher. The present can be tense, but the past can be worse. That's for damn sure.
Sometimes you have to leave behind everything you know to find the place you truly belong...
Nana the cat is on a road trip. He is not sure where he's going or why, but it means that he gets to sit in the front seat of a silver van with his beloved owner, Satoru. Side by side, they cruise around Japan through the changing seasons, visiting Satoru's old friends.
He meets Yoshimine, the brusque and unsentimental farmer for whom cats are just ratters; Sugi and Chikako, the warm-hearted couple who run a pet-friendly B&B; and Kosuke, the mournful husband whose cat-loving wife has just left him. There's even a very special dog who forces Nana to reassess his disdain for the canine species.
But what is the purpose of this road trip? And why is everyone so interested in Nana? Nana does not know and Satoru won't say. But when Nana finally works it out, his small heart will break...
Sing, Unburied, Sing is a searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In her first novel since the acclaimed Salvage the Bones, Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America.
Drawing on influences like Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward provides an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Their mother, Leonie, is a drug-addicted presence who is both tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother when she’s high. Mam is dying of cancer, and Pop tries to run the household while teaching Jojo how to be a man.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie takes her kids on a journey to Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. The trip is rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and explores the power, and limitations, of family bonds. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, this novel is an essential contribution to American literature.