Ancient Highway

From the bestselling author of Jewel and The Difference Between Women and Men comes a haunting novel of home, family, and the pursuit of lost dreams. Ancient Highway brilliantly weaves together the hopes and regrets of three characters from three generations as they reconcile who they are and who they might have been.

In 1925, a fourteen-year-old boy leaves his family’s farm and hops a boxcar in a dusty Texas field, heading for Hollywood and a life in the “flickers.”
In 1947, a ten-year-old girl aches for a real home with a real family in a wide-open space, far from the crowded Los Angeles streets where her handsome cowboy father chases stardom and her mother holds a secret.
In 1980, a young man just out of the Navy visits his elderly yet colorful grandparents in Los Angeles, eager to uncover his family’s silent history.

For the Holmeses, a longing for something else–another place, a second chance–seems to run in the family DNA. From Earl’s journey west toward Hollywood glory, to his daughter Joan’s wish for a normal existence away from the bright lights, to his grandson Brad’s yearning for truth, this deep-rooted desire sustains them, no matter how much the goal eludes them. But ultimately, in each generation, a family crisis forces a turning away from the horizon and the acceptance of a reality that is by turns harsh and healing.

Inspired by stories of his own family, Bret Lott beautifully renders the lives of ordinary people with extraordinary faith in a mesmerizing and finely wrought tale of love and letting go.

Publishers Weekly

Lott picks up the themes that dominated his 1999 Oprah Book Club Selection, Jewel, in this multigenerational saga. In 1927, 14-year-old Earl Holmes runs away from his unhappy home in Hawkins, Tex., for Hollywood to become a movie star. But poor bumpkin Earl has better luck in marrying big band singer Saralee Kennedy than he ever does building his acting résumé. Earl and Saralee's only child, Joan, grows up to resent her father's dogged pursuit of a practically nonexistent film career at the expense of his family's happiness. She has plenty of her own residual problems by the time she has her son, Brad, who joins the navy and returns in 1980 to live with his grandparents, Earl and Saralee, in L.A. Estranged from Joan, Brad takes it upon himself to heal the family's rifts. The colorful off-camera anecdotes of filmmaking are gems, particularly how Earl lands a bit role in a forgettable Three Stooges skit. This chronicle of the Holmes family is sluggish in spots, but Lott's handling of characters and domestic conflicts picks up for readers who stick through the first act. (July)

Bret Lott is the author of the novels A Song I Knew by Heart, Jewel (an Oprah’s Book Club selection), The Hunt Club, Reed’s Beach, A Stranger’s House, and The Man Who Owned Vermont; and the story collections A Dream of Old Leaves, How to Get Home, and The Difference Between Women and Men; the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers; and the writing guide Before We Get Started. Named editor of The Southern Review in 2004, Bret Lott lives with his wife in Charleston, South Carolina.