Sugar Run: A Novel

At seventeen, Jodi was imprisoned for what she’s always maintained was a gun accident that left her girlfriend, Paula, dead. After serving eighteen years of her sentence, Jodi is free. She meets a wayward single mother, Miranda, who is barely managing to care for herself and her three young sons. Miranda agrees to help Jodi keep the promise she made to Paula years ago—to rescue Paula’s little brother, Ricky, from their violent father. Of course, Ricky is no longer a scared child—he’s a grown man with anger and secrets of his own. This mismatched group returns to Jodi’s family land in West Virginia, even though the property doesn’t belong to her anymore. Fracking is decimating the landscape; Jodi’s brother seems hell-bent on derailing her parole, and despite her best intentions, Jodi finds herself wrestling with the fact that some people are not meant to be saved.

The ravaged land that Jodi loves echoes the scarred, damaged breadth of her life. Time and again she opens herself up to love, only to be disappointed by others and herself. The beauty of the prose in Sugar Run offsets the blunt, harsh lives of the characters; unfortunately, the unsettling community Jodi and the others have fashioned doesn’s make it easier for them.