-
Access Our
Most Anticipated
Books of 2025!
Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:Set within the charged insularity of rural West Virginia, Sugar Run is a searing and gritty debut about making a run for another life.
On the far side the view was nothing but ridgelines, the craggy silhouettes rising up against the night sky like the body of some dormant god. Jodi felt her breath go tight in her chest. This road went only one way, it seemed, in under the mountains until you were circled.
In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she’s sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter. She’s released eighteen years later and finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian mountains, she goes searching for someone she left behind, but on the way, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother. Together, they try to make a fresh start, but is that even possible in a town that refuses to change?
The chapters from the past and the chapters from the present often mirror one another in subtle ways to demonstrate the lessons Jodi has failed to learn, a deft expression of Maren's skills in plotting and building suspense. It is apparent from the beginning that Jodi and her fellow outcasts are on a collision course with catastrophe, and when it finally comes at the end of the novel, it is tenderly wrought. Maren's empathy for her protagonist's plight is evident and inspires similar feelings in the reader...continued
Full Review
(671 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
In Sugar Run, the principal protagonist Jodi McCarty has just been released from prison after serving a nearly 20-year term. She finds life as a free woman more difficult than she imagined, largely due to her inability to find gainful employment. This is a common issue with newly released inmates, and one of the leading causes of recidivism.
According to a 2018 study conducted by the Brookings Institute, only 55% of former inmates report any earned income the first year after their release. Among those who do find work, the median income is just $10,090. Only 20% of working inmates reported earning over $15,000. (The federal poverty line in the United States in 2019 is $12,490 for a single person household.)
A 2018 report by the ...
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Sugar Run, try these:
by Willy Vlautin
Published 2022
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in this scorching novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family.
by Christine Montross
Published 2021
Galvanized by her work in our nation's jails, psychiatrist Christine Montross illuminates the human cost of mass incarceration and mental illness
C. Morgan Babst, author of The Floating World
Sugar Run is a joyride - an intoxicating, headlong exploration of the hazards of freedom and the deadly consequence of desire. Maren's blistering prose will take your breath away.
