Lullaby Road
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winter has come to Route 117, a remote road through the high desert of Utah trafficked only by eccentrics, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. Local truck driver Ben Jones, still in mourning over a heartbreaking loss, is just trying to get through another season of treacherous roads and sudden snowfall without an accident. But then he finds a mute Hispanic child who has been abandoned at a seedy truck stop along his route, far from civilization and bearing a note that simply reads “Please Ben. Watch my son. His name is Juan” And then at the bottom, a few more hastily scribbled words. “Bad Trouble. Tell no one.”.
Despite deep misgivings, and without any hint of who this child is or the grave danger he’s facing, Ben takes the child with him in his truck and sets out into an environment that is as dangerous as it is beautiful and silent. From that moment forward, nothing will ever be the same. Not for Ben. Not for the child. And not for anyone along the seemingly empty stretch of road known as Route 117.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Anderson's atmospheric but implausible sequel to 2015's The Never-Open Desert Diner, veteran trucker Ben Jones learns at the Stop 'n' Gone Truck Stop outside Price, Utah, that Pedro, a tire man he knows slightly, has left his apparently traumatized son, Juan, who looks to be five or six, and the boy's fiercely protective dog in Ben's care. Ben feels he has no choice but to take Juan and the dog with him. Things quickly go from bad to worse: a speeding semi almost obliterates him and his precious cargo; his nomadic preacher friend, John, who hauls a life-size crucifixion cross up and down the highway, is left critically injured by a hit-and-run that may not have been an accident; and someone draws a gun on him for what will prove the first of several times during the next couple of days. Ben's efforts to protect the child and the dog plunge him into increasing peril, but even after a harrowing climax the reader may well feel as though the journey has been, in the trucker's words, "back and forth between no place and nowhere." Arresting desert vistas and distinctive characters leave a lasting impression.
