Old Border Road: A Novel

by Susan Froderberg

Overview

Katherine is 17, living alone in the beautiful, desolate landscape of southern Arizona. Her mother is feckless, her father busy with his new family. Meeting Son, the scion of a local rancher, seems like deliverance. They marry and live as a family in his parents' venerable adobe house, but it soon becomes clear that Son is a man who, as his father says, has a "young heart near withered beneath the breastbone."

Katherine must find her own way during a dangerous months-long drought, when everything seems to be disintegrating around her. Susan Froderberg's incantatory language — and her deep knowledge of both the complexities of a small, deeply-rooted place and the human heart — make Old Border Road soar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316098786
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/07/2011
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Susan Froderberg was born in Washington State. She moved east to study medical ethics and philosophy at Columbia University, where she received her doctorate.  Froderberg lives with her husband in New York City. Old Border Road is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a Western transformed by its focus on a young woman....Katherine has a raw poetic voice that makes the tale an arresting incantation of longing and regret."—Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Ms. Froderberg superbly draws on the Sonora Desert's singular features to highlight Katherine's changing emotions....The hard lesson of Old Border Road is that there are endless enticements that lead men to dishonor."—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"This remarkable debut novel, the story of a girl, begins with an adobe house and a road that runs south to north."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"This simple story is beautifully told."—Barbara Fisher, Boston Globe

"Froderberg writes with an elegance and originality that captivates....The story has heart, perhaps because in Katherine we find a character to rally behind."—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Set against a stifling drought, events take on their own slow-burning heat. . . .Froderberg's writing...achieves the sublime."—The New Yorker

From the Publisher

"Set against a stifling drought, events take on their own slow-burning heat. . . .Froderberg's writing...achieves the sublime."

The New Yorker

"Froderberg writes with an elegance and originality that captivates....The story has heart, perhaps because in Katherine we find a character to rally behind."

Minneapolis Star Tribune

"This simple story is beautifully told."

Barbara Fisher

"This remarkable debut novel, the story of a girl, begins with an adobe house and a road that runs south to north."

Susan Salter Reynolds

"Ms. Froderberg superbly draws on the Sonora Desert's singular features to highlight Katherine's changing emotions....The hard lesson of Old Border Road is that there are endless enticements that lead men to dishonor."

Sam Sacks

"This is a Western transformed by its focus on a young woman....Katherine has a raw poetic voice that makes the tale an arresting incantation of longing and regret."

Ron Charles

In this first novel, Katherine is still a teenager when she marries Son and moves with him into his parents' adobe house in southern Arizona. The marriage quickly goes sour because of Son's infidelity and irresponsibility. But Katherine grows close to her in-laws, who seem to parent her better than her own parents did, and with their help and that of a few other mentors, she finds her inner strength and begins the path to self-actualization. The details of ranch and rodeo life are atmospheric, but there is a vagueness to the narrative style that makes the story hard to engage with. Seemingly important information is glossed over, and occasional shifts into nonlinearity are confusing. Too often the prose is indirect to the point of incoherence, as in "I'm trying to find the true place I know to get the feelings right that I had had there once." VERDICT Expect some regional interest in Arizona, where the author lived for seven years; otherwise, not an essential purchase.—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

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