French Pond Road

Billy Kagan, hero of Anthony Catlin's first novel, Birdman, has spent most of the previous decade living overseas after a separation from his wife and infant son. Now, returning to New England, he lives a life of seasonal employment, mainly outdoors, mainly alone. He finally has the feeling of achieving some stability and peace of mind. His isolation from the mainstream is self-induced and only broken by his dog, Casey, his workmates, and two women, Mandy Barnes, a hiker with a penchant for troubled men, and the Old Woman, a former physician stripped of her license and now living in the woods around French Pond. Angela, a freelance journalist, has raised Mickey Kagan, her grandson. In Venezuela, Angela and Mickey live with a lay Catholic missionary, Theresa, in her home on the coastal range, a center for local women who are organizing to build a road to the capital. Cata, the daughter of a woman who has been murdered for her political organizing, befriends Mickey. Back in the USA, Mickey and Cata take to the highway on a Kawasaki 650 to find Mickey's long lost father on French Pond Road. A story of redemption and spiritual survival against the odds, French Pond Road features Anthony Catlin's characteristic dead-on portrayals of people, young and old, living on hope and under the radar.