Q Road : A Novel [Hardcover]

Bonnie Jo Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2002

Welcome to Q Road, in Greenland Township, where the old way of life is colliding with the new. On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and Q road (or "Queer Road," as the locals call it) has become home to an unlikely mix of people. The neighbors include a sixth-generation farmer and his rifle-toting child bride, and evangelical bartender, a tabloid-reading agoraphobe, a philandering window salesman, and an asthmatic boy who longs for the love of a good father.These folks all smell the pig manure from the Whitby farm and share the same grand views of the Kalamazoo River and the oldest barn in the township -- until one disastrous October afternoon.

Bonnie Jo Campbell's first novel combines offbeat humor, eccentric characters, and unique insights into modern rural America, where family traditions have flown the coop and only the cycle of the seasons remains. At the heart of this tale are three characters so integrally connected and devoted to the Harland farm that they might not survive anywhere else; their lives, their livelihoods, and their sometimes violent love for one another are all rooted in the soil of this square mile.

As "The Village Voice" said of Campbell's story collection, she "crystallizes those moments when benumbed everyday routine is briefly jolted by dizzy instants of lucidity." It may take a spring tornado or a lightning bolt in the garden to get the folks of "Q Road" to pause in their work, but when they lift their gaze collectively, it can be life-altering. Brilliant atumn foliage creates the backdrop for the rich and ragged human landscape of rural southwestern Michigan, a place Campbellhas explored in her award-winning short stories. In this passionate and funny novel she digs even deeper, to reveal the beauty and strangeness of her ferocious women, confused men, and hungry children.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A farm in rural Kalamazoo County, Mich., provides the backdrop for Campbell's appealing first novel, a May-December love story augmented by suspense, secrets and Native American mysticism. Rachel Crane, a homely, foul-mouthed teenager, lives on a houseboat with her reclusive mother, Margo. They are tenants of George Harland, whose wife abandoned him to maintain his declining farm alone. Rachel is as antisocial as her mother: her one friend is David Retakker, a young asthmatic who idolizes George. Her sexuality is awakened by George's reprobate younger brother, Johnny, but when Margo catches them together, she shoots him dead, then disappears without a trace. George becomes irresistibly drawn to the strange girl and asks her to marry him; she accepts, but just so she can inherit "his damned land," to which she feels entitled because of her Native American ancestry. Only in an extended climax, when David's life is imperiled, does Rachel begin to allow herself to feel genuine love for anything but the land. The cast of well-developed supporting characters includes April May Rathburn, an old woman with some dark secrets; her nephew, Tom Parks, a cop who's suspicious of Margo's and Johnny's disappearances; and Milton Taylor, the born-again owner of the Barn Grill. Coincidence and synchronicity among land, animals, humans and weather are cards Campbell (Women and Other Animals) plays too often; likewise, descriptions of Rachel's profound connection to the earth (the girl all but sprouts roots) become tiresome. However, it would take more than that to spoil this thoughtful, well-paced, deeply moral (though not moralizing) novel full of hard lessons and the wisdom gained from them across generations.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Winner of the 1998 Associated Writing Programs Award in Short Fiction, Campbell launches her career as novelist with this account of "Q Road," where old-time farmers meet grasping suburbanites head on.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1St Edition edition (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743203658
• ISBN-13: 978-0743203654
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Campbell grew up on a small Michigan farm in a house her grandfather built. When she left home for the University of Chicago, her mother rented out her room; she has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss Alps on her bicycle, and traveled with the circus. She has led adventure tours in Russia and Eastern Europe. After earning a master's degree in mathematics, Campbell began writing fiction. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Western Michigan University, and now lives in Kalamazoo.

Her most recent book is the collection, American Salvage, about which Alan Cheuse, NPR reviewer has said, "In these stories about cold, lonely, meth-drenched, working-class Michigan life, there's a certain beauty reaching something like the sublimity of a D.H. Lawrence story." She is also the author of Women & Other Animals (University of Massachusetts, 2000), and the novel Q Road (Scribner, 2003). She has won the AWP award for short fictiona Pushcart prize, the Eudora Welty Prize (2009), and she was named a Barnes & Noble Great New Writer. Her fiction has recently been published in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Alaska Review, Boulevard, and Witness. The New York Times has called her stories "Bitter but sweetened by humor," and Publisher's Weekly said Campbell details, "domestic worlds where Martha Stewart would fear to tread." She feeds donkeys and practices kobudo weapons arts in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Visit her website at www.bonniejocampbell.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The strange faces of love..., March 6, 2003

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Q Road : A Novel (Hardcover)

As carefully stitched together as a patchwork quilt, with colorful squares made of quirky characters, the inhabitants of Greenland Township, Michigan, are bound by the commonality of their daily labor and innate love of their farmland. This is the heartland of America, land that has sustained generation after generation. But as much as a failing farm economy, suburbia encroaches upon this pastoral existence, and city people are willing to tolerate only so much discomfort in their newly constructed rural environment. Once sprawled across the countryside, secure from city confines, the old families are slowly replaced by pre-fab housing developments.

Q Road's three main protagonists are strikingly different people, each with particular idiosyncrasies, forming their own core family: father, child-bride, and son, love filling the solitary loneliness so long entrenched in their hearts. The spirited 17-year-old Rachel, a new bride who has married for the security of owning land, smashes through life with no guidance or socialization, save that of her own invention. George Harland, her middle-age-plus husband, is a sixth-generation farmer who knows only that his days are suddenly more bearable with Rachel sharing their backbreaking work and love-drenched nights. George cannot imagine life without Rachel.

When twelve-year-old David is drawn to the Harlands, it is for George's fatherly protection and Rachel's pure female strength, his own mother ever more distant and self-involved. On a clear day when trouble hovers in the air, David is the catalyst for catastrophe, his one breach of judgment forever changing the landscape of their future. For the three of them, life will never be the same again.

The Darwinian inevitability of nature vs. progress lurks around the perimeter of Greenland Township and Campbell skillfully portrays the hardships and realities of farming, as even the vigorous landscape becomes a vital player in the drama. Campbell's reality is hard-edged and she never shies away from its blunt and often brutal surfaces. Yet the eccentric characters of Q Road fit snugly into the environment, their own edges sharpened early by experience.

Q Road is like an Alice Hoffman novel with sharp teeth and a rapacious appetite. At the same time, the peculiar township inhabitants have many of the intransigent qualities of Carolyn Chute's Beans of Egypt, Maine. Sprinkled with quirky individuals, neighborhood malcontents and busybodies, Q Road is overflowing with the many faces of humanity, as they reach bravely toward their better selves. Luan Gaines/2003.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A world of memorable characters, October 21, 2002

By 

Janica (Golden, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Q Road : A Novel (Hardcover)

While I picked up this book because of the story's location, (outside Kalamazoo, Michigan where my daughter lives,) I was immediately drawn into this rural world peopled by an array of eclectic and sympathetic characters struggling with the onslaught of family farms being devoured by development. The plot revolves around one man's attempt to continue farming against the odds (and fate itself.) While the theme is both grand and timely, it is the people who live on Q Road that make this book one of the most absorbing books I have read in some time. Bonnie Jo Campbell has a gift for bringing a range of characters to life, and every one is both unique and believable and unlike any characters that have gone before. Parts are so beautifully written I had to read them several times, just to feel the goosebumps raise up on my skin from the sheer beauty and power of her words. When I finished, I wanted to begin again, for I was reluctant to leave these people and this world behind. I came away feeling that I had lived this story and cared deeply about the characters and most importantly about the land itself.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint of heart., January 13, 2003

By 

Paul Howard (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Q Road : A Novel (Hardcover)

Q Road is not for the faint of heart. Author Bonnie Jo Campbell takes you down a Michigan side-road to a rough-hewn world of brutally flawed characters. No sparkling wits, no dreamy introverts here; rather these misshapen and misfortuned people struggle through each and every day. Cantankerous and eccentric, they are driven to alienate kin and neighbors alike. Victims of violent acts of their past, broken marriages, rural recession and self-abuse, they gain pleasure from the misery of others.

Around them caterpillars are splattered under the wheels of cars, crows munch the remains of road-kill squirrels and cats devour birds, all in a landscape haunted by the death-march of the indigenous Potawatomi Indians. Out of this harsh reality, Campbell builds a story of grittiness, purpose and great humor that is suddenly jarred by a tragedy. An act of carelessness not malice, it threatens to overwhelm the community and break their spirit.

In Campbell's competent hands, there is no hysterical reaction and no desperation, just people digging deeper and accepting less. Q Road becomes a road to recovery. No giant steps, no minor miracles, just a poignant reminder that the human spirit needs just small kindnesses to prevail.

Bonnie Jo Campbell has, rightly, been described as a fresh new voice in American literature. This, her first novel, should be the launching point for a distinguished career.