South Road

• Main Author: Pearsall, Sarah E
• Format: Others
• Published: FIU Digital Commons 2013
• Subjects: Novel; Fiction; Coming of Age
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/821; http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1933&context=etd

SOUTH ROAD, a novel told in third-person limited, follows Adrienne Harris as she navigates the trials of her coming-of-age summer and then must deal with the aftermath. 1997: seventeen-year-old Adrienne Harris wants nothing more than to flee her eccentric grandmother’s rule and leave Harbor Point and never look back. When she meets her new neighbors, Adrienne knows her life will never be the same. Adrienne quickly falls in love with the charismatic Quinn Merritt. They decide to keep their relationship a secret since both families disapprove. This secret starts a chain reaction that seemingly leads to the suicide of the troubled and poetic Lucas Merritt. The summer culminates with Adrienne running away, pregnant and heartbroken. 2011: thirty-one-year-old Adrienne is an out of work line cook and single mother. The story opens as Adrienne reluctantly returns home to Harbor Point to care for her ailing grandmother. Once home, Adrienne has to confront the things that haunt her—the summer she met and lost both Merritt brothers, and also her dysfunctional relationship with her grandmother—in order to heal and repair her own life and her relationship with her daughter. In the end, Adrienne discovers many truths that alter her perception of her past in Harbor Point. Adrienne is finally able to move forward and start to build a life for her and her daughter. Harbor Point, the last place in the world Adrienne Harris wanted to be, turns out to be the only place she wants to call home.