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Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite
Life tends to lead all of us on a journey down an unknown path, a road to somewhere or to nowhere at all. It can be cyclical and lead us back to where we began, or can continue on indefinitely, ending up who knows where. For Isa, life led her away from her beloved northern Scotland to a very different but equally difficult life in the weather-scarred, dusty, unforgiving Canadian prairies. Eking out an existence where the land would not produce, surviving when all else seemed to challenge mere survival, Isa weathers the elements and shoulders the responsibilities, managing to maintain a homestead that her parents had started, a homestead that left them almost destitute and took away their health. Isa soldiered on until there was nothing left on the homestead to sustain her. Where will her path lead her next? Will it take her back to the original road to nowhere in northern Scotland?
Her friend and neighbor, Sarah, escaped an unwanted pregnancy to marry a man twice her age, only to discover another relationship far different from the one she had always hoped to share with someone else. She escapes the forced marriage to nurse the wounded during World War I, only to return to a different relationship with the man she was forced to marry years earlier. Where will Sarah's path lead her?
In The Road to Nowhere, Catherine M Byrne has written a very poignant story about two women, set in the early part of the twentieth century in Alberta, Canada. This was before the dust-bowl era that spoke of disasters all across the prairies of North America, but this era was no less difficult than what would follow a few decades later. Like Catherine Cookson, Byrne has created an epic tale about real, hard-working people. Powerful descriptive passages and wonderful characterization make the reader instantly feel compassion for these two women and the difficult lives they must lead. This is an outstanding story about the trials of carving out a living in pre-World War One and post-World War One Scotland, and the unforgiving Canadian prairies. It is life, real life, on a road that may or may not go anywhere at all, but may in fact lead the women back home. The nowhere becomes almost anywhere. Well done!
