DAREN DEAN
Praise for Roads
​
“From the opening page, Daren Dean propels the reader into his story and never taps the brakes as his characters move toward an inevitable reckoning. Dannie Gail Posey is the novel’s young heroine, and we cheer her on as she navigates a violent world that seeks to entrap her even as she dreams of escaping it. Roads confirms Daren Dean as an important new voice in rural noir.”
—Ron Rash, Author of In The Valley, Serena, The Risen, The World Made Straight, One Foot in Eden
"His latest is a novel called ROADS that we should all be reading. His command of prose is so strong that I feel some of his sentences are just like that old one-two punch; they send me reeling and then stay with me for days."
—Jon Boilard, author of Junk City, Settright Road, The Castaway Lounge, A River Closely Watched
​
"Dean deftly creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia and desperation that practically seeps out of the pages. Dannie's attempts to make sense of both her past and present . . . with this grim, twisty tale providing its own cast of memorable characters. And perhaps most impressively of all, every bit of the story's tension manages to implode in a jaw-dropping final act. A gripping tale of brutal murder, betrayal, and redemption that will challenge readers' assumptions."—Kirkus Reviews
​
​
​
​
​
What's it about?
​
Fifteen-year-old Dannie Gail Posey is a small-town girl with dreams of escaping her roots on Posey Hill. When the Glencairn Sheriff brings home her now catatonic older sister, Carley, who has fallen victim to abuse by someone in the infamous Lynch family—Dannie’s world is shaken to its core. When the Sheriff and even her Uncle Smith Posey, known and feared since his youth, concede there’s nothing to be done, Dannie struggles with the injustice of it all and vows to make it right. She charges her Uncle Smith with the responsibility of confronting the worst Lynch of them all, Russell Lynch.
The dark country roads of Cote Sans Dessein county keep their secrets hidden with a smothering embrace. Roads is a powerful story of revenge, justice, salvation, retribution. Dannie discovers an inner strength in a family that seems to hold no one dear. This is a tale that will tear you up worse than the chorus from an old religious hymn.
With the same grit and gothic prose of his recent works, The Black Harvest and This Vale of Tears, that have earned him praise as "The poet laureate of fallen angels" (Robert Olen Butler), Daren Dean has written an indelible story that stays with the reader like a neck tattoo. Not since Dorothy Allison’s Bone or Larry Brown’s Fay, have we seen such a fierce young woman.