Road to Nowhere
by Paul Robertson
Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2008, 407 pp., hardcover.

Road to Nowhere is built around an unusual premise--the controversy that can arise from a proposal to build a new road. While this novel isn't as gripping as Robertson's The Heir, eventually I got caught up in the small-town politics. I certainly never imagined an entire novel could be created around a semi-rural construction project, but as we get to know the characters in the quiet town of Wardsville, their personalities draw us in even as a couple of suspicious deaths make us wonder if a murderer is trying to stop the project.

Road to Nowhere has a lot of characters, so it's best to read it in a few sittings so you can keep everyone straight. This isn't an easy book to pick up and restart. It probably should have been a little shorter, but it does give a fascinating look at small-town life in North Carolina.

I assume Robertson was partly inspired by the story of North Carolina's famed "road to nowhere," a pre-World War II road project that was promised in exchange for land the government used to create a park and man-made lake. That project was never completed. You'll have to read Road to Nowhere to see if Wardsville actually gets their new road.

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