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A New York Times Notable Book: A group forms its own surrogate family on the margins of society in this novel by the author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine.
Mickey Gammon, fifteen, has dropped out of school and been kicked out of his home. But he has found a new place in the Settlement—a rural cooperative that deals in alternative energy, farm produce, and locally made goods. Run by "The Prophet," the Settlement is demonized by the media as a compound of sin, but its true nature remains foreign to outsiders.
It is here where Mickey meets another deserted child, six-year-old Jane, whose mother is in jail on trumped-up drug charges. Playing "secret agent," Jane cunningly prowls the Settlement in her heart-shaped sunglasses, imagining that her plans to bring down the community will reunite her with her mother. As they struggle to adjust to their new, complex surrogate family, Mickey and Jane are about to witness mounting unrest within the Settlement's ranks—which soon builds to a shocking and devastating crescendo.
The School on Heart's Content Road is "a profoundly human novel . . . Absolutely one of a kind" (USA Today), from an author who, "like Flannery O'Connor . . . has a gift for expressing the true spirit of a culture" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"Chute can't help but create characters who live and breathe." —The Washington Post
Praise for The School on Heart's Content Road
“Brave, passionate and raw, fiercely written . . . A profoundly human novel . . . Absolutely one of a kind.”—USA Today
“A roiling stew of cajoling comedy, political diatribe, and incisively rendered portraits of rural poverty and despair.”—The Washington Post
“A triumph of characterization and color . . . Vivid . . . Breathtaking . . . Enjoy the ride.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“[A] vibrant pastiche of a novel . . . [with] energy-on-the-loose prose and anti-establishment atmospherics.”—Chicago Tribune
“Carolyn Chute emerges as a modern-day Dickensian voice for the losers in class warfare. . . . [The School on Heart's Content Road is her]best book to date. . . . We have our Dickens now.”—San Diego Union Tribune
“Raw and strong and vivid, with deep resounding echoes of Faulkner and Upton Sinclair . . . Chute’s a scientist, brilliant and mad, lighting matches under beakers, mixing compounds, breaking words into their smallest divisible parts.”—The Los Angeles Times
“Like a ferocious bulletin from an alternate universe—tumbling, pell-mell, brilliant and strange—comes this explosive, discomfiting . . . beautiful novel.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Conscience-altering . . . Chute bares a hidden America . . . [offering] perspectives on the need for justice and mercy, a safe house for the heart.”—O, the Oprah Magazine
Carolyn Chute is the author of four other novels, The Beans of Egypt, Maine, Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts, Snow Man, and Merry Men. She has been awarded a John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a Thorton Wilder Fellowship. Chute currently lives in southwestern Maine with her husband and daughter.