Back Roads

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain discussions of sexual and physical abuse, and incest.

“All those times me and Skip tried to kill his little brother, Donny, were just for fun.”

The first line of the novel introduces Harley’s obsessive focus on events of his childhood, centering on his best friend’s halfhearted attempts to kill his little brother. Harley will spend many hours reading and rereading a letter Skip sent him from college, comparing himself to Skip even though they are living very different lives. These moments are a distraction from the difficulties in Harley’s life and reveal his desire for a male role model. In the end, Harley will come to understand that Skip wasn’t a very good person and shouldn’t have tried to hurt his brother.

“Every morning on my way to work, I drove past a yawning group of bare-legged ones in shorts and miniskirts waiting for the school bus with Donny the stump. In the past, I would’ve slowed down and watched from my rearview mirror until they disappeared around a bend in the road, but lately looking at girls shredded my nerves. It was a big part of becoming a man: discovering there was a difference between wanting sex and needing it.”

Harley’s obsession with sex appears to be typical teenage thoughts at the beginning of the novel, but even in this early chapter there are indications that Harley’s attitude toward sex is unusual. Harley’s uneasiness around girls the same age as Amber foreshadows his revelation that Amber sexually abused him when they were younger.

“The house was dark when I got home. No one had thought to leave the porch light on for me, but I didn’t care. I remembered once getting into an argument with my mom about her not leaving the light on for my dad on the nights he stayed out drinking. I told her a man driving up to his own house at night deserved to see a light burning no matter what he had done. She said if the man had done something that needed forgiving, a burning porch light was the last thing he wanted to see.”

This passage speaks to both Consequences of Adult Responsibilities Too Young and Parental Abandonment. It offers a window into Harley’s sense of guilt for failing to protect his sisters from his father’s abuse, something he has struggled with for a long time. Harley has taken on a parental role in the aftermath of his father’s death and Bonnie’s imprisonment, but his sense of responsibility toward his sisters didn’t begin with his legal custody of them.