The Road to Dalton
by Shannon Bowring
Europa Editions
June 6, 2023
From debut author Shannon Bowring comes a novel of small town America that Pulitzer-winner Richard Russo calls, “measured, wise, and beautiful”.
It’s 1990, and the lives of the inhabitants of Dalton, Maine play on.
Rose goes to work at the diner every day, her bruises hidden from both the customers and her two young boys. At a table she waits, Dr. Richard Haskell looks back on the one choice that’s charted his entire life, before his thoughts wander back to his wife, Trudy, and her best friend.
Trudy and Bev have been friends for longer than they can count, and something more than lovers to each other for some time now—a fact both accepted and ignored by their husbands. Across town, new mother Bridget lives with her high school sweetheart Nate, and is struggling with postpartum after a traumatic birth. And nearer still is teenager Greg, trying to define the complicated feelings he has about himself and his two close friends.
In most small towns, the private is also public. When one of Dalton’s own makes an unthinkable decision, the community is left reeling. In the aftermath, their problems, both small and large, reveal a deeper understanding of the lives of their neighbors, and remind us that no one is exactly who you think they are.
The Road to Dalton offers valuable understandings of what it means to be alive in the world—of pain and joy, conflict and love, and the endurance that comes from living.
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Praise for The Road to Dalton:
“An impressive debut bursting with detail and love for the town it brings to life.”
—Kirkus, Starred Reveiw
"THE ROAD TO DALTON” is the kind of book that too often flies
under the literary radar these days: measured, wise, beautiful. But make
no mistake. Beneath its smooth surface there lurks a gripping story and
people worth caring about precisely because their joys and sorrows are
so intensely private. It takes a gifted writer like Shannon Bowring
to pierce the veil of that privacy and reveal both them and ourselves.
—Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“THE ROAD TO DALTON… show[s] us about the human experience: how we shape
and are shaped by our landscapes, how love persists in the face of great aridity and pain,
how we strive to know one another though we never really can….THE ROAD TO
DALTON locates the miraculous in the mundane, then holds it up, glimmering, for the
reader to see. In the end it reminds us that, no matter our circumstances, each of us is
imbued with a dignity that cannot be denied or taken from us.”
—Ron Currie, Jr., author of EVERYTHING MATTERS and THE ONE-EYED MAN
“THE ROAD TO DALTON is paved with beauty, grace, humility, and love.
Bowring has written a work so deeply committed to its characters you can’t
help but feel part of the novel’s world. This is a triumphant work that
reminds us what literature should be.”
—Morgan Talty, author of NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ
In wise, tender, sharp-eyed prose, Shannon Bowring illuminates the interlocking
lives of rural Mainers in her stunning debut novel THE ROAD TO DALTON. I
thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end, for its vivid portrait of time and
place and its cast of instantly unforgettable characters, all portrayed in glorious and
often heartbreaking humanity. Bowring is an immensely talented writer to watch.
—– Aaron Hamburger, author of HOTEL CUBA and NIRVANA IS HERE