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Soon after her husband's tragic death, Robin Besher makes a startling discovery: He had recklessly blown through their entire savings on decrepit rentals in Four Points, the Appalachian town Robin grew up in. Forced to return after decades, Robin and her daughter, Haley, set out to renovate the properties as quickly as possible―before anyone exposes Robin's secret past as a teenage prostitute. Disaster strikes when Haley befriends a troubled teen mother, hurling Robin back into a past she'd worked so hard to escape. Robin must reshape her idea of home or risk repeating her greatest mistakes. Margo Orlando Littell, author of Each Vagabond by Name, tells an enthralling and nuanced story about family, womanhood, and coming to terms with a left-behind past.

Title: The Distance From Four Points

Author: Margo Orlando Littell

Paperback: 224 pages

Publication Date: 05/28/2020

Publisher: University of New Orleans Press

Language: English

ISBN: 1608011798

ISBN-13: 9781608011797

My Review

If towns are the bodies to harbor secrets, then their houses are the bones to witness them.

Robin has left her life behind in Four Points, the Appalachian hometown of her childhood many years ago, and buried a secret past she'd rather not go back to which she traded for a more upscale life in the suburbs at Mount Rynda. With her marriage to Ryan, she isn't hurting for anything and enjoying amazing clothing, fancy health foods, beautiful furniture, and their daughter goes to a private school.

Then one day, Ryan suddenly dies and Robin is left with responsibilities and a pool of money she blows through too quickly. At her attorney's office, she now has to discuss Ryan's investment properties that would lead her back to Four Points, the place she has avoided for as long as possible.

To make months' end meet, Robin has to go to her childhood hometown and handle the properties her husband has rented out, meet the tenants, and collect rent. One of the properties will suit her and her daughter to stay in for a little while until everything is sorted out.

Some things are the same and never change in old towns like those people who have lived there long, don't move on, and oppose modern life. The forces of change and restoration and the dilapidated past meet head-on in Four Points as more and more investors come into town to take part in the upswing. Robin is baffled by the rundown places her husband invested in and the demands that need to be met to keep her tenants happy while using her elbows among the politics of landlords and investors around.

While she is getting situated fixing up rentals, her daughter meets kids in school that will connect to Robins' past life and things become instantly more difficult. In a gentle tug of war, Robin becomes more and more entangled with her old life, an old friend and someone she never wanted to see again, because these skeletons have long been buried.

In a whirlwind of events, Robin has to overcome her past, learn to be a stern landlord, fend to put food on the table, provide for her daughter, and heal the wounds of her childhood that are hitting her like a title wave. By the time the novel reaches its crescendo, there isn't a doubt left about Robin's abilities, but rather if there is a close to the rushing floodgates that have propelled the reader and characters through an emotional ride.

The Distance From Four Points is exquisite on the surface, poignant to read and packs an emotionally charged punch deep inside. The vulnerability of the characters easily rouses empathy as the dreadful events of teenage prostitution come to the surface and the lasting implications create new wounds all over again.

This novel is profoundly touching and will stay with you for a while after reading. Though there were moments I wanted to cringe about the age gap of the main character and her perpetrator especially towards the ending of the novel, I am ultimately very pleased with the redeeming prevail of Robin's characterization and tenaciousness.

This is a novel with a profound effect I would recommend reading if you enjoy emotionally charged novels with themes of trauma that end on a fortunate note.

Enjoy :)

I received a physical copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

All opinions are my own.

Thank you!