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    Sugar Run: A Novel
    Sugar Run: A Novel
    Sugar Run: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Sugar Run: A Novel

    Written by Mesha Maren

    Narrated by Hillary Huber

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she's sentenced to life in prison. When she's released eighteen years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start. But what do you do with your past-and with a town and a family that refuses to forget, or to change?

    Set within the charged insularity of rural West Virginia, Mesha Maren's Sugar Run is a searing and gritty debut about making a break for another life, the use and treachery of makeshift families, and how, no matter the distance we think we've traveled from the mistakes we've made, too often we find ourselves standing in precisely the place we began.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJan 8, 2019
    ISBN9781684416417
    Sugar Run: A Novel

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    Reviews for Sugar Run

    3.5/5

    43 ratings5 reviews

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    • 2/5
      The book has merit, but I couldn't bear to read it. Almost finished it, but had to put it aside. Unutterably sad.
    • 2/5
      The author creates a vivid cast of characters, but I found them to be unlikable and self-destructive. Drugs, alcohol, child endangerment, fracking, Appalachian poverty. Perhaps an original concept, but wouldn't rate it worth the read.
    • 4/5
      How many times should a reader scream NO, STOP, DON'T DO THAT to every character in a three hundred page novel? In this one, you'll lose count as you follow Jodi, who's just been paroled for a murder she committed when she was eighteen, as she attempts to rescue the brother of Paula, the girlfriend she killed, from his violent family. On the way, she's taken up by Miranda, who's on the run from her faded country music star husband with her three young sons. Jodi's fantasy of making a new family in the rundown shack left to her by her grandmother in the mountains of West Virginia is doomed from the start, so there's no suspense in the quest itself. The only question is who/what's going to finally finish her off: her parole officer, her drug-dealing brothers, Miranda's pill habit, Jodi's own self-destructive tendencies, or the fracking crew that's set up on the homestead adjacent to the land that was sold off for non-payment of taxes while she was incarcerated. Betrayed by everyone except the little kids, a kindly neighbor, and a Mexican refugee, it's only the quality of the writing, and the nature of Paula’s murder, as it spins out in look-backs, that kept me from joining Jodi in complete despair. Not for the faint of heart.Quotes: "She'd always seen herself like this, as if on camera. Under other eyes she moved more smoothly.""When I was little, I thought there was a me-shaped space, and when I found it I'd know it. There were hundreds of millions of spaces and you had to find the one that was right.""She could see now how she'd laid the old pattern over her new life like the fragile tissue-paper outlines used to cut dresses. She'd carefully unfolded it and tried to fit them all inside, smothering any real chance they'd had. She'd never even acknowledged the possibility of other possibilities."
    • 4/5
      Jodi McCarty is out of jail, after having spent 18 years imprisoned for manslaughter. She has only two things in mind – rescue her old lover’s brother, Ricky, from his abusive father and then go home to the land in West Virginia that her grandmother, Effie, left her. As she sets out to do that, she meets and falls in love with Miranda. Miranda has her own problems. She’s estranged from her husband, a washed-up singer, who has taken her three sons from her. Jodi and Miranda help each other and before long, she and now grown-up Ricky and Miranda and her three sons are living at Effie’s old home. Jodi is determined to build a better life for them all here on her grandmother’s land. Ms. Maren is quite an accomplished writer and immediately pulled me into this intriguing story. A lot happens in this book and the plot covers small town bigotry, the awful destruction brought on by fracking, substance abuse, poverty, the love of land and the shifting of love. The language can be tough at times but that’s the type of book it is – gritty and raw and earthy. The language can also be stunningly beautiful. I admit that I was often turned off and angered by the decisions made by these characters, especially since children were involved. But then I’d see glimpses of the hope in Jodi’s heart and wanted things to work out for all of them.I found this one hard to put down and am looking forward to seeing what’s next from this author. Recommended.This book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      From the beginning, I had the feeling that things were not going to turn out well for Jodi.After serving eighteen years of a lifetime prison sentence, Jodi is free under supervised release. The jails are overcrowded, and she was only seventeen when convicted of killing her girlfriend Paula. She is given a bus ticket and sent into the world to report to her home district parole officerBut Jodi instead takes a bus in the other direction, to save Paula's younger brother Ricky from their abusive father. Jodi meets Miranda, a needy young mother of three who latches onto Jodi like a drowning woman to a life raft. This makeshift family--Miranda, her boys, and Ricky--travel with Jodi to her home in the Appalachian mountains where she hopes they can find a refuge. They move into Jodi's grandmother's abandoned cabin. As the fracking operation pushes closer to them, Jodi's brothers draw her into their illegal activities and Miranda slips back to pills, while questions rise about Ricky.In Sugar Run by Mesha Maren, an ominous cloud compelled me to turn pages. Backstory chapters reveal Jodi's story, and Miranda's and Ricky's stories are unraveled. It appears that their futures are mired in decisions made long ago. The story ends with violence and heartache, but also with hope as Jodi realizes there is a future beyond home and it's web to the past.This is an impressive first novel with memorable characters and polished, glowing writing.I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.There is something essential and powerful that keeps me coming back, andI feel like Jodi and I both realized at some point that although the homeyou’ve recalled so vividly during all your years away is a place that only trulyexists in your heart and your dreams, it will always be inextricably a part ofwho you are.from Montani Semper Liberi, an essay by Mesha Maren