The Way Home

by George Pelecanos (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.24

  When Thomas Flynn leaves his son, seventeen year old Chris, at Pine Ridge, a juvenile prison near Washington, D.C., his heart is broken but his mind is made up: Chris will have to pay for the mistakes he's made. Inside, Chris is exposed to kids from a different D.C. than the comfortable one he knew - one less remote from the street fights, car chases, and marijuana deals that got him here in the first place. A decade later, Chris and the friends he made at Pine Ridge seem reformed. Chris has a job, thanks to his father, a girlfriend, and his own apartment. But when he and the others are inadvertently caught up in a burglary, old habits and worse instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability with sudden treachery and violence. With the drama, compassion, and urgency for which Pelecanos is celebrated, The Way Home travels the streets of Washington, D.C. and tells the story of its people, and the tensions that always linger just out of sight, circling back again and again to that clapboard house on Livingston Street where Thomas and Chris Flynn's rocky relationship moves from distrust and scorn toward a flawed, but real, redemption. How far will a father go to save his son? That question is the beating pulse beneath George Pelecanos's spectacular new novel, a page-turning story of rebellion, greed, and the high price of a second chance.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.24

  How far will a father go to save his son? A page-turning story of rebellion, greed, and the high price of a second chance from 'one of the finest crime writers in America' THE TIMES. Hidden beneath the floorboards in a house he's remodeling, Christopher Flynn discovers something very tempting-and troubling. Summoning every bit of maturity and every lesson he's learned the hard way, Chris leaves what he found where he found it and tells his job partner to forget it, too. Knowing trouble when he sees it-and walking the other way-is a habit Chris is still learning. Chris's father, Thomas Flynn, runs the family business where Chris and his friends have found work. Thomas is just getting comfortable with the idea that his son is grown, working, and on the right path at last. Then one day Chris doesn't show up for work-and his father knows deep in his bones that danger has found him. Although he wishes it weren't so, he also knows that no parent can protect a child from all the world's evils. Sometimes you have to let them find their own way home.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.24

  Christopher Flynn is trying to get it right. After years of trouble and rebellion that enraged his father and nearly cost him his life, he has a steady job in his father's company, he's seriously dating a woman he respects, and, aside from the distrust that lingers in his father's eyes, his mistakes are firmly in the past.One day on the job, Chris and his partner come across a temptation almost too big to resist. Chris does the right thing, but old habits and instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability with sudden treachery and violence. With his father and his most trusted friends, he takes one last chance to blast past the demons trying to pull him back. Like Richard Price or William Kennedy, Pelecanos pushes his characters to the extremes, their redemption that much sweeter because it is so hard fought. Pelecanos has long been celebrated for his unerring ability to portray the conflicts men feel as they search and struggle for power and love in a world that is often harsh and unforgiving but can ultimately be filled with beauty.