Reviews

In all my reading experience, I don't remember ever coming across a collection of linked stories that could also be classified as a page-turning mystery thriller, but this is exactly what the wickedly talented Dennis McFadden has achieved in Jimtown Road. It is sure to be considered one of the year's best. -Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Heavenly Table and The Devil All the Time Stepping onto Jimtown Road begins a satisfying, if unsettling, journey across generations in the fictional town of Hartsgrove, Pennsylvania. In exquisite prose, Dennis McFadden fills the pages of these skillfully crafted linked stories with love, hope, death and danger. They offer an unblinking look, illuminated with burning intensity by the ever-present moon, at the darkest parts of the human heart. Peopled by very real and flawed characters who feel like anyone's own neighbors and friends, I found myself at the end of this book aching to return as soon as possible. I strongly urge everyone to visit McFadden's Hartsgrove. You will not leave disappointed. -Ray Morrison, author of In a World of Small Truths With the artfully linked story collection, Jimtown Road, Dennis McFadden lured me to a sun-gold hilltop, and then pulled me into the thick, dark woods. He led me-breathless, heart thumping-over winding country roads and, driving too fast into the night without headlights, up and down the streets of Hartsgrove, his fictional-yet so real-small, Pennsylvania town. I followed him into dim taverns and dusty antiques shops and the lonely homes of his bruised and (sometimes) resilient characters. These stories, these characters, this town inhabit me like an ache, like an exquisite yearning. There is so much need in these pages. Need for security, revenge, love, apology, intimacy, belonging, escape, power, peace. These needs are like the small town neighbors of Hartsgrove: they are always there, always in one another's business, always weighing on the choices made and their consequences. As I moved with McFadden from one story to the next, the ghosts of each tale (those girls, those poor little girls) followed me, haunted me. They haunt me still. -Patricia Ann McNair, author of The Temple of Air