Roads of the Heart

by Christopher Tilghman

With the deep emotion and insight of “a true storyteller” (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times), Christopher Tilghman, the author of the acclaimed Mason’s Retreat and In a Father’s Place, has written a powerful new novel of men and women, fathers and families.

Eric Alwin has gone to visit his elderly father, a once commanding and charismatic Maryland senator who has seen his public service soured–and his family broken–by a sex scandal. Realizing that his own unfaithfulness, his disaffection with his career and marriage, seem to be a continuation of a family pattern, Eric is astonished to find his father proposing a bold expedition.

The ensuing trip through the Deep South and the American heartland becomes both a journey into the emotional truth of the Alwin family and a breakthrough into a new kind of resilience and understanding, and love. Along the way, Eric will know anew not only his mother, Audrey, but his sisters, Alice and Poppy, and his own wife and son. As he discovers the surprising secret behind the scandal that defined his father’s fate, he will also realize what he must do to shape a more authentic and coherent life for himself.

Christopher Tilghman’s Roads of the Heart is a brilliant achievement by an author who, grappling with the strains and discords of contemporary American culture, achieves a special understanding of how family members love and lose and find one another every day.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Fiction

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Christopher Tilghman is the author of two short-story collections, In a Father’s Place, and The Way People Run, and three novels, The Right-Hand Shore, Mason’s Retreat and Roads of the Heart. Currently the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, he and his wife, the writer Caroline Preston, live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/christ...

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stroke-addled octogenarian Frank Alwin is reflecting back on his life and trying to communicate his thoughts to his middle-aged children, primarily protagonist son Eric. Frank was a state senator from Maryland's Eastern Shore and an adulterer, pushed out of office after the revelation that he had added a girlfriend to his ghost payroll. His wife left with the youngest child, Poppy. Now son Eric, 50-something, is also a cheater, serially. It's in the genes apparently. There's no reason for it; Eric loves and is still attracted to his slim, pretty wife Gail. But now he's banging a junior executive at work, and Gail is retaliating with an affair of her own. There's friction in the family because Dad's eye is always drawn to daughter-in-law Gail instead of appreciating daughter Alice, who does most of the gruntwork that makes Dad's life smooth. Now Dad wants to take a road trip in the twilight of life - in Alice's massive SUV, even though she isn't invited on the trip. It's time to visit First Wife and mother of the children in Alabama - without calling first. Everyone hops in the car except gruntwork daughter Alice. Mom is surprised to see them. Then they drive on to Colorado, where Eric and Gail's 20-something layabout son Tom is finding himself. Mysteriously, Dad's final stop is Ohio. No one knows why, but it will be obvious to readers: there's an illegitimate child belonging to the ghost payroller. It all wraps up just in time for Dad to shuffle off his mortal coil.

I generally hate road trip novels.

I make note of the use of nigger in novels of all eras. Here, Frank's father was a farmer in the 40s and urged Frank to take up politics rather than farming. "About farming he said, The niggers have it under control."

[David Curry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect that if anyone in a class in an MFA writing program today were to call a writer compassionate, everybody including the instructor would likely snort or guffaw. Well, I’m not in an MFA writing program in any capacity, I don’t enshrine irony and alienation or live in mortal fear of sentimentality, and I unapologetically and emphatically wish to call Christopher Tilghman a compassionate writer.. His uncommon fairness to his characters won me over in his first book, In A Father’s Place, a memorable 1990 collection of short stories, and this quality has kept me loyal to his work ever since.

Given that he’s one of my favorite writers, I was aghast to discover that I had somehow managed to miss one of his books, the 2004 novel Roads of the Heart. I’ve just finished it and, while it’s not by any means Tilghman’s best, in spite of some clunky passages I once again admired his generosity and understanding in dealing with the emotional complexities of families and friendships. I occasionally winced over something heavy-handed or trite, but each time that happened I was quickly caught up again. ( Isn’t one of the distinguishing characteristics of fine writing the ability to survive flaws or shortcomings? Any writer, over time, is bound to have them, but in the best we forgive them.)

At the end of the second chapter, Tilghman’s lead character Eric Alwin is in a New York City taxi, at 3 a.m., having left the apartment where he has committed adultery with a younger coworker, Lilly, He loves his wife Gail and is worried that she is considering a separation, but he has given in to Lilly’s seduction.

“There was hardly anyone on the streets, the city in its unreal early dawn, streetlamps piercing the night and silencing all with their yellow glow. Would any of this hold up? Who knew, except that, in the end, Lilly would marry someone older, though not as old as he, and after not too many more years of success she’d find a way to pack up the husband — a journalist, a TV correspondent — and move them back to Milwaukee or Minneapolis. She’d take the Midwest by storm, and her kids would be small and coordinated and great hockey players, even the girls, and she’d get older and that curly black hair would turn a wiry gray. She might even send him Christmas cards with some kind of naughty code reflecting back to this night. Before Eric knew it there were tears running down his cheeks, tears without sobs; a release. Tears that seemed not for him or from him, but from another’s heart, as if his eyes and their ducts were simply being borrowed for a few minutes — tears for us all, for our hopes and sins.”

By the time that arrives, in context, it stopped this reader.

As this extraordinary family saga continues, deft details and observations abound: “It was a nice house inside, better furnished than the exterior would suggest. They had made their home on the inside, with a privacy that did not concern itself with what other people thought.”


Quibble: Tilghman too often has trouble with pronouns and their antecedents. I found myself having to reread dialogue in order to understand who was doing the talking.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://bloodygranuaile.dreamwidth.or...

[Rosanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another family, eastern shore story. Charming, though not my favorite of his.

[Misha · Rating 2 out of 5]

BookList: Tilghman, the author of In a Father’s Place (1990) and Mason’s Retreat (1996), returns to the rich themes of father-son relationships and family bonds. Like Nicholas Sparks, Tilghman writes with bittersweet warmth and understanding, loving and forgiving his characters even as he reveals their flaws. New York ad exec Eric Alwin’s life is at a crossroads: his 30-year marriage is suffering, and he finds himself chafing against his suburban world of diminishing possibilities. The care of his stroke-debilitated father, Frank, a selfish man who abandoned his family and whose political career ended in scandal, only adds to Eric’s troubles. When encroaching mortality causes Frank to attempt to make amends, Eric accompanies his father on a road trip to the South--a journey that prompts self-examination for both men. While the writing sometimes hinges on the sentimental (echoing the Hallmarkesque title), this is a satisfying family drama told in a firm but compassionate voice. -- MishaStone (BookList, 06-01-2004, p1706)

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of it was very compelling but didn't like the last several pages. Also, I would have liked to know under what circumstances Frank and the son had gotten to know each other. No word about Adam at the end and why was Alice moving into the house?

I think I liked The Right Hand Shore the best.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible closure to lives destroyed by bad politics and cheating politicians. i wish I could have had that type of closure with my parents but sadly they died without asking my permission.

[Jinny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, intense, uncomfortable in many spots. Want to read more by this author. Somewhere between three and four stars.

[David T · Rating 5 out of 5]

From a male perspective, this is a beautifully written novel about the relationship between a son and his father.