Notes from the Shelf

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November Road by Lou Berney is a 320-page historical fiction thriller. Set against the assassination of JFK, the novel centers around a cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America.

Frank Guidry is a loyal lieutenant to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello who has learned everyone is expendable. Now it’s his turn. He knows too much about the crime of the century—the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Within hours of the murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is dying, and since Guidry was just in Dallas on an errand for the boss only two weeks ago, he suspects he’s next. He hits the roads to Las Vegas to see an old associate, someone who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish.

He knows he has to keep moving, but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car and two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees it as the perfect disguise for him to cover his tracks from the hit men searching for him. Posing as an insurance man, he offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California, but first they have to stop in Las Vegas.

Charlotte is also on the run, from a drunkard of a husband and a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma, so she feels she needs all the help she can get. As they make their way to Las Vegas, they learn maybe too much about each other and fall in love. For the first time, Guidry doesn’t just want to survive, he wants to have a real life, but it might get both of them killed in the process.

I couldn’t put November Road down, I read it in just two days. From the very first pages, it hooked me and wouldn’t let me go until I was finished. It did turn out very differently at the end than I was thinking, which was a bit disappointing.

I loved Charlotte as a character! She was relatable in that she wanted something better for her life and her children’s life than to stay in Oklahoma, but she didn’t know anything she was doing, she had to make it up as she went. It takes a lot of courage to uproot your life and make changes when you have no idea how it will turn out, so I enjoyed reading her journey.

Then Frank’s tension is added in the mix, with him being on the run and keeping it from Charlotte and her kids. It definitely made it more thrilling of a read, seeing how it would turn out with a mob boss after them. You can’t help but root for them to make it and have a new life together, but it’s definitely not a romance book. I maybe had my hopes set a little too high, so the ending was a bit devastating.

Despite the ending, I still give November Road 5 stars.

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