Road Ends

By: Mary Lawson

Narrated by: Ishan Davé, Jess Salgueiro, John Fleming

Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

He listened as their voices faded into the rumble of the falls. He was thinking about the lynx. The way it had looked at him, acknowledging his existence, then passing out of his life like smoke.... It was the first thing - the only thing - that had managed, if only for a moment, to displace from his mind the image of the child. He had carried that image with him for a year now, and it had been a weight so great that sometimes he could hardly stand.

Mary Lawson’s beloved novels, Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, have delighted legions around the world. The fictional Northern Ontario town of Struan, buried in the winter snows, is the vivid backdrop to her breathtaking new novel.

Road Ends brings us a family unravelling in the aftermath of tragedy: Edward Cartwright, struggling to escape the legacy of a violent past; Emily, his wife, cloistered in her room with yet another new baby, increasingly unaware of events outside the bedroom door; Tom, their eldest son, 25 years old but home again, unable to come to terms with the death of a friend; and capable, formidable Megan, the sole daughter in a household of eight sons, who for years held the family together but has finally broken free and gone to England, to try to make a life of her own.

Road Ends is Mary Lawson at her best. In this masterful, enthralling, tender novel, which ranges from the Ontario silver rush of the early 1900s to swinging London in the 1960s, she gently reveals the intricacies and anguish of family life, the push and pull of responsibility and individual desire, the way we can face tragedy, and in time, hope to start again.

©2014 Mary Lawson (P)2021 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

National Best Seller

“The frozen landscape, which might fill some with dread, opens a rich world for Lawson.... It is a beautiful novel, with the psychological twists and turns of each character gently and poignantly unfurled.” (The Globe and Mail)

“Every Canadian student should be reading Mary Lawson novels - starting with Crow Lake and now including her newest accomplishment, Road Ends.... Like all great writers - and Lawson is among the finest - she tells her story in a deceptively simple and straightforward way, but one that resonates with anyone who has ever struggled with doing the right thing by a family member despite a desperate longing to escape that burden. She humanizes even the least sympathetic of her charges.” (Toronto Star)

“Mary Lawson finds literary gold in the hard landscape of the Canadian Shield.” (Ottawa Citizen)

Mary Lawson does not disappoint

I just finished this book and I will need to process it and it’s ending for a while. Lawson is such a master at the story of family, it’s push and pull, it’s dysfunction, it’s intricacies. Her characters are wonderfully conceived.
I have read Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge but a long time ago. I remember very much enjoying them and am so happy that all her books are now on Audible.