The Distance From Four Points

"[u]tterly engrossing...a moving examination of home and belonging." 

—Book Riot 


A "quiet, compelling novel" ... "Robin carries the novel with her melancholy confusion, grit, and wry perception." ... "The novel is rich with details about the southwest corner of Pennsylvania: its haunting natural beauty and economic blight, the colloquial use of yinz instead of you, Sheetz convenience stores, gun racks on trucks, and an underlying sense of community." 

—Foreword Reviews 


"I loved The Distance From Four Points! Tough women rise up and take back their lives--a story for today--Robin Besher is a new kind of hero. After a rags to riches ride, she loses her husband, her house, her fortune and is driven back to the doom of her impoverished past and all its secrets to begin again. This time she is on her own with an angry teenager in tow. How she survives is so inspiring that you will stay up all night to finish this book and never forget Robin's triumphant reconciliation with her past and present in Four Points." 

—Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise 


"In The Distance from Four Points, Margo Orlando Littell brilliantly captures a woman thrust after her husband's death into a life that feels utterly impossible--light-years away from the comfortable world Robin and her daughter have been living in for the past thirteen years. And the most terrifying part is that Robin's new life is the one she started in: the place where she has to begin again, surmounting overwhelming challenges, is her hometown. Littell pulls no punches in evoking this Pennsylvania town, and the grief, the fear, the poverty, and the dark memories all facing Robin are almost unbearable at the beginning of the novel. But Littell's unflinching portrayal of the hardships in Four Points makes Robin's grit and determination all the more riveting, and ultimately the hard-won hope she discovers is enormously satisfying, without any hint of sentimentality. This is an eye-opener of a book, brutal and tender at the same time."

—Ursula DeYoung, author of Shorecliff 


Soon after her husband's tragic death, Robin Besher makes a startling discovery: He had recklessly blown through their entire savings on decrepit rentals in Four Points, the Appalachian town Robin grew up in. Forced to return after decades, Robin and her daughter, Haley, set out to renovate the properties as quickly as possible―before anyone exposes Robin's secret past as a teenage prostitute. Disaster strikes when Haley befriends a troubled teen mother, hurling Robin back into a past she'd worked so hard to escape. Robin must reshape her idea of home or risk repeating her greatest mistakes. Margo Orlando Littell, author of Each Vagabond by Name, tells an enthralling and nuanced story about family, womanhood, and coming to terms with a left-behind past.


Margo Orlando Littell grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and received an MFA from Columbia. After spending many years in New York City, Barcelona, and Northern California, she now lives in New Jersey with her family.