Book Review: No Road Home | John Fram
Toby Tucker and his sister Willow grew up spending hours every Sunday with their guardian, Uncle Exra, watching The Prophecy Hour. The televangelist program is hosted by a fire-and-brimstone televangelist preacher named Jerome Jeremiah Wright. Jerome refers to himself as “America’s prophet” and he uses a grandiose, flashy-style of preaching the virtues and lessons of the Old Testament.
Now an adult, Toby is recently married to Jerome’s granddaughter, Alyssa Wright. Toby has a son, Luca, who is a sensitive and free-thinking child. Toby has protected him from the world where he was raised—a world that was covered by the shadow of Alyssa’s grandfather—as much as possible. As Alyssa is about to celebrate her thirtieth birthday, the family takes a trip to the Wright family compound in Hebron,Texas. Religion, wealth, bigotry, and power swirl around the Wright family compound, and the Wrights seem to have secret plans in store for Toby and Luca.
Toby has never had much stock in Jerome’s predictions. Still, he can’t help but feel unsettled when he learns about Jerome’s most recent predictions at the end of The Prophecy Hour and that they were specifically about Toby and Luca. Things are off at the Wright compound from the beginning. Strange messages on doors that are brushed aside. When Jerome is murdered the night that Toby and Luca arrives and a bad storm rolls in, Toby realizes they are trapped for now with a family that believes Toby’s arrival may have caused Jerome’s death (some might argue it was the knife that stabbed him). Luca has conversations with a mysterious, unseen figure wearing a black suit. With every cop funded by the Wrights, Toby realizes they may blame him for Jerome’s murder.
The Wrights have plans for Toby and Luca, not the least of which is sending Luca to a church-run wilderness camp to “fix him” (they all refer to Luca as a girl, but Toby said Luca identifies as a boy and he has no problem with it). The Wrights may have plans, but they have secrets too. Secrets they don’t want exposed. Something isn’t right with the Wright family, and Toby won’t let them try to ruin him and Luca.
This book is majorly creepy and unsettling. The brand of religion that the Wrights preach is not what most of us are used to. The book gave me Get Out vibes (which if you haven’t seen it, add it to your list; it’s fantastic and eerie). The story has a claustrophobic feel to it, and it seems to press in more and more the longer Toby and Luca are at the compound. Atmospheric, chilling, and dark, the story has a flawless southern gothic vibe that added to the suspense. The whole book has a mood.
Toby has embraced Luca’s gender identity, but the Wrights clearly have not. The bigotry starts before they’ve even arrived at the compound, when a woman working in a Cracker Barrel comments on Toby’s “daughter”. He politely corrects her, but this is only the beginning of what the father and son will have to deal with.
I didn’t trust Alyssa. She’s a Wright, after all. While she seemed to have good spirit and good intentions with Toby, it all seemed a bit strange. She meets him in Los Angeles, quickly forms a relationship, asks him to get married, then asks him to move back to Texas. Something must be off, right? It was hard to tell. Alyssa clearly had secrets, but what sort of secrets was she keeping? One big one is revealed about a quarter of the way in, and it is a juicy one.
There’s also the scar on Toby’s arm that is mentioned subtly but frequently from the very beginning of the book. A fish-hook-shaped white scar stretching from his wrist to his elbow. People keep commenting on it, making Toby uncomfortable. The scar is allegedly from the accident that took his parents’ lives as a child and that he and Willow survived. But this is the sort of book where I questioned everything. The Wrights are the sort who can control someone’s own life narrative if they choose to. Did Toby really know what happened to him?
Thank you to Atria Books for my copy. Opinions are my own.
About the Author
John Fram is the author of the critically acclaimed supernatural thriller THE BRIGHT LANDS and the queer Gothic chiller NO ROAD HOME, named a Washington Post notable book and a Most Anticipated Summer Read by Cosmopolitan. A native of Texas, he lives in Waco.
About the Book
A young father must clear his name and protect his queer son when his wealthy new wife’s televangelist grandfather is found murdered in this binge-worthy locked-room thriller from the acclaimed author of The Bright Lands—perfect for fans of Ruth Ware, Paul Tremblay, and Alex North.
For years, single father Toby Tucker has done his best to keep his sensitive young son, Luca, safe from the bigotry of the world. But when Toby marries Alyssa Wright—the granddaughter of a famed televangelist known for his grandiose, Old Testament preaching—he can’t imagine the world of religion, wealth, and hate that he and Luca are about to enter.
A trip to the Wright family’s compound in sun-scorched Texas soon turns hellish when Toby realizes that Alyssa and the rest of her brood might have some very strange plans for Toby and his son. The situation only grows worse when a freak storm cuts off the roads and the family patriarch is found murdered, stabbed through the heart on the roof of the family’s mansion.
Suspicion immediately turns to Toby, but when his son starts describing a spectral figure in a black suit lurking around the house with unfinished business in mind, Toby realizes this family has more than murder to be afraid of. And as the Wrights close in on Luca, no one is prepared for the lengths Toby will go in the fight to clear his name and protect his son.
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