Gravel Roads

Like the view from a cracked wing mirror, each chapter reveals another sharp reflection of the characters who inhabit the Ails valley. Revealed in fragments, their lives overlap and intertwine through decades. Gravel Roads spotlights the psychological landscape of rural New Zealand in the raw, which isn't always pretty but is always authentic. Humour and tragedy coexist for these unpretentious people of Ailsford, as their lives intersect, collide, fall apart and move on. The chapters are wound together by country roads, and the searching journeys that are made along them. The people are tough but they aren't dumb and don't shrink from self-examination. What they see can be unsettling, or beautiful, even at the same time. Gravel Roads is writing that isn't afraid to exceed the speed limit, or just crawl up the overgrown driveway at the head of the valley.