A Novel
“Goshen Road is a rich, multigenerational tale exploring women’s expanding roles in a rural environment. The women are afforded few opportunities here, and they often settle for much less than they deserve, but they are resourceful and ultimately as resilient and reliable as the untamable land.” Marie Manilla, author of Weatherford Award-winning The Patron Saint of Ugly
- Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award
- Winner of the WCONA Book of the Year for 2022
- Recommended by the Women’s National Book Association for Great Group Reads.
“Bonnie Proudfoot writes the kind of book that means something, a book that carries weight in a way that only serious fiction can. Her words delight and move, but they do much more than that. She interrogates the truth of the people and place of Appalachia. Her debut should be savored by those who admire timeless fiction.” Charles Dodd White, author of In the House of Wilderness
Inspiration
Goshen Road is a slim, fourteen-chapter novel in linked episodic narratives, with different chapters told from different points of view, including both third person and first person narration. Each chapter contains the dramatic tension of an independent short story, yet the characters appear and reappear, their lives playing out throughout many of the chapters. In this way, the whole set of linked narratives comes together with resonance and depth. The individual chapters/ episodes reveal the way time and life events impact the lives of the main characters, two sisters who marry young and confront the struggles of rural life. Readers have pointed out that the landscape of rural West Virginia is so important to this novel that it almost becomes an additional character.
Scope
Goshen Road is an imagined place with roots in western West Virginia, a rugged rural setting whose main industry is harvesting timber, where only the men are employed, and human life is still very much at the mercy of a combination of forces, both economic and environmental. The time period is 1967-1992. The importance of this work is in its intimate look at the way the struggles and challenges of life in a rural environment can impact and alter the relationships the characters form with each other; the ones who can provide each other with strength and support against the onslaught of an unforgiving set of circumstances can also undermine that strength and support.
More reviews for Goshen Road
Meredith Sue Willis’ Books for Readers
Goshen Road is now available in paperback, hardback, audible, kindle, nook or google play. Find the book at your local independent bookstore, or look for it on the following websites:
Interview with Bonnie Proudfoot about the novel, conducted at the Inner Geek bookstore in Huntington WV, by the author Carter Taylor Seaton in Feb. of 2020
Interview with Bonnie Proudfoot that aired on inside Appalachia on May 13, 2020, conducted by Eric Douglas, Associate Producer
Podcast interview with Bonnie Proudfoot from 49 Writers.
Please use the form below to contact Bonnie for further information.
Crossing Genres 