Product Description

General FictionLarge Print EditionJoanne Greenberg brings unclouded vision and sureness to bear on almost everything she touches New York TimesAt the center of Joanne Greenbergs twelfth novel is a woman named Tig, now a grandmother, who chooses to leave her family for a year to join a walk across North America in the spirit of her activist youth. As she traverses the continent in the name of community, her letters to her husband, daughters and grandchildren mark an equally monumental voyage. Once again, Greenberg masterfully explores the landscape of family and love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6380729 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03
• Format: Large Print
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 522 pages

From Library Journal
Antigone ("Tig") is a civil rights activist and grandmother who has joined a year-long, cross-country environmental walk. Tig realized that her ties to home strengthen with distance, and she becomes a confidante for her family, learning more from their correspondence then she would were she at home. For her husband, Marz, and her grandson, Ben, this is a year of introspection and new beginnings, while for her granddaughter, Hope, there is a destructive relationship and a pregnancy that threatens the family. Greenberg (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, 1964) cleverly uses letters from different family members both to explain events and to give different perceptions of reality. Each letter is a gem unto itself, and together they tell a compelling story of hope and despair. Greenberg's characters are rich and complex, her writing deceptively simple, and the story memorable. Highly recommended.?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ont.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Does anyone really write letters like this anymore? The Warriners do, providing Greenberg with the excuse for an epistolary novel. Tig Warriner, a sixtysomething grandmother, is trying to recapture some of the passion of her early activist days by taking a yearlong walk across America with a group of environmentalists. At home in Colorado are her husband, Marz; her daughters, Justice and Solidarity; and several grandchildren. The letters she sends describe the walk in vivid detail. The letters she receives, especially from Marz, Solidarity, and Justice's 19-year-old daughter, Hope, weave other layers into the story. In particular, Hope marries Larry, a Native American with severe alcohol problems. Though Tig, unlike Hope's parents, is willing to give Larry the benefit of the doubt, she can see the dangerous turn Hope's life is taking, pregnant now and increasingly isolated from her family and friends. At first, all the letter writing threatens to impede the narrative flow; one wishes Greenberg would just get on with it. Gradually, though, the story takes hold. Mary Ellen Quinn

From Kirkus Reviews
Greenberg (No Reck'ning Made, 1993, etc.) hits her full storytelling stride in a tale of domestic tragedy revealed through the diaries and correspondence of a 62-year-old activist grandmother who's participating in an Environmental Walk from California to Cape Cod. It's during this journey that Antigone (``Tig'') confronts questions raised by crises en route and at her Colorado home: When does ideal love become blind to its object? When does a crusade for humanity lose sight of human beings? Tig has left husband Martin, to whom she is happily married (as she had left him in her younger years for one Cause or another), to join a purportedly nonpolitical yearlong walk coast-to-coast that will sound out Americans on their views about the environment. Part of the small army of campers, Tig and her friend Polly discover much about the nation's varying moods--from the group anger of young Navajos to the group optimism of flooded-out Missourians. Meanwhile, letters from home--frank, tense, worried--indicate trouble. Daughter Solidarity, divorced and with two small sons, is devastated by the torments of her friends and neighbors, a gay male couple--one defeated by a cruel custody fight for his sons, the other bent on self-destruction. But, worse, daughter Justice and her husband are about to suffer the agony of losing their 19-year-old daughter Hope in a mismatched marriage to Indian Larry, a product of foster homes and psychiatric social programs, and with no roots in the tribe he claims. Larry drinks and rages, while Hope, pregnant, continues her sacrificial dedication to her ideal of love. The earnest, desperate, middle- class family attempts to save Hope and to reach out to Larry, who is complex, lost, and ultimately dangerous. Tragedies will be played out, as Greenberg nicely catches the way in which causes and romantic ideals sometimes run afoul of complex, stubborn realities. Stimulating and involving. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A Terrific Story in Letters
This novel kept me up until the wee hours. It was wonderful..... Written as a series of diary entries and letters to and from Tig (Antigone) as she walks cross-country taking an environmental survey. Her letters are to and from her husband, Marz; her two daughters, Justice and Solidarity; her grandson, and her granddaughter.

I really enjoy epistolary novels, and was in awe of the way Joanne Greenberg was able to find such an authentic and distinctive *voice* and writing style for each character. Tig's wisdom and her ability to smooth things over/negotiate/arbitrate/give advice was apparent in her letters, although she was not a totally sympathetic character. She has always been an activist and sometimes, as a younger woman, put her causes before her commitment to her daughters and her marriage.

Through these letters, we see family interaction in a unique way. It is not always a good picture, but I think it is honest and explores many issues faced (or not faced) by families today.

Tough going in places, this book is not one I will forget.

Joanne Greenberg has done it again!
Joanne Greenberg is one of the finest fiction writers ever, and this new novel is one of her best! Told entirely through letters, the story fascinates, educates, entertains, saddens, surprises, and enchants its reader. The personality of each character radiates from each letter, gently but persuasively (one daughter begins, "Dear Mother", while the other writes, "Moms....") Differing relationships, are, too, reflected as the main character Tig writes openly, carefully, warmly, defensively, lovingly, and sometimes humorously. The characters are totally real, the plot is compelling, and the style is excellent. At the end of the story, I felt that I had come to know and care deeply about all of the family, and almost as if I, too, had been a part of an exciting, tiring, and frustrating walk across America. A truly delightful book!

A Super Discovery
Though I haven't read any of Greenberg's other books, you can be sure I will look them up after finishing _Where the Road Goes_. This is the most powerful epistolary novel I've read in a long time, and the suspense was breath-taking (don't peek--this is one book that will consistently surprise you if you let it). Greenberg tackles a number of hot-button issues in a thoughtful, heartfelt, and complicated novel that keeps ratcheting up the stakes.