Narrow the Road by James Wade

 

NARROW THE ROAD

By James Wade

Genre: Southern Fiction, Literary Fiction, Coming of Age

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Pages: 306

Publication Date: 26 August 2025

SYNOPSIS

In this gripping coming-of-age odyssey, a young man’s quest to reunite his family takes him on a life-altering journey through the wilds of 1930s East Texas, where both danger and opportunity grow as thick as the pines.

With his father missing and his mother gravely ill, William Carter is struggling to keep his family’s cotton farm afloat in the face of drought and foreclosure. As his options wane, William receives a mysterious letter that claims to know his father’s whereabouts.

Together with his best friend Ollie, a mortician in training, William sets out to find his father and bring him home to set things right. But before the boys can complete their quest, they must navigate the labyrinth of the Big Thicket, some of the country’s most uncharted, untamed land. Along the way they encounter eccentric backwoods characters of every order, running afoul of murderers, bootleggers, and even the legendary Bonnie and Clyde.

But the danger is doubled when the boys agree to take on a medicine show runaway named Lena, eliciting the ire of the show’s leader, the nefarious con man Doctor Downtain. As William, Ollie, and Lena race to uncover the clues and find William’s father, Downtain is closing in on them, readying to make good on his violent reputation. With the clock ticking, William must decide where his loyalties lie and how far he’s willing to go for the people he loves.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Wade is the award-winning author of Hollow Out the Dark, Beasts of the Earth, All Things Left Wild, and River, Sing Out. He is the youngest novelist to win two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and a recipient of the MPIBA’s prestigious Reading the West Award. His work has appeared in Texas Highways, Writers’ Digest, and numerous additional publications. James lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and children.

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REVIEW

I was immediately intrigued by Narrow the Road because it’s set in Southeast Texas, that humid, pine-scented corner of the world where I grew up. From the very beginning, I knew I was in for something special: “Wayward young wanderer, alone against the enormity of being.”

Typically, I fly through books, skimming past the details to chase the plot. It’s a rare story that has me slowing down to savor and ponder phrases. Narrow the Road was one of those books for me. I took my time, sipping the language, wrapping myself up in its cadence. The rich, lyrical writing moved me, and so many phrases have stayed with me, like: “Vestiges of forgotten galaxies turned energy ripe for creation.” 

At its heart, Narrow the Road is about a young man, William Carter, who’s just trying to hold the pieces of his life together—his mother is sick, his father has gone missing, and the bank is coming for their farm. He and his best friend, Ollie, a mortician-in-training, set out to find William’s father, and along the way, they pick up Lena, a runaway from a snake oil medicine show. What unfolds from there isn’t just an adventure through the Big Thicket—it’s a meditation on courage, loyalty, and what it means to face the tragedies of humanity head-on.

The setting pulled me right back to my own childhood summers in those woods. I could feel the sticky air, smell the pine needles, hear the rustling of life all around. Wade’s descriptions of the Big Thicket are so vivid that they’re almost tactile—every page drips with the heavy, humid poetry of East Texas.

But the beauty of the prose doesn’t soften the story’s unflinching look at suffering. Wade threads through the darkness of the human condition—incest, human trafficking, addiction, illness, war guilt—and somehow finds glimmers of meaning there. When Ollie, after witnessing an unthinkable circumstance, asks, “What are we doing that something like that can just happen?” it’s a familiar question, a universal one we’ve all asked in moments when the world feels cruel and overwhelmingly bleak. Wade doesn’t offer easy answers, but he invites us to sit in the discomfort and look for grace anyway.

Throughout the novel, snippets of Thomas Carter’s (William’s father’s) thoughts surface. These chapters further explore morality and consequence, and give us insight into a man tormented by his combat experience in World War I. 

By the time I turned the final page, I felt both hollowed out and deeply moved. The ending is poignant and bitter, yet fitting. Wade doesn’t hand us redemption wrapped neatly in a bow—he reminds us that courage isn’t about conquering despair but walking with it, one hard-earned step at a time.

In Narrow the Road, James Wade has written a story that’s equal parts Southern Gothic odyssey and existential prayer. It’s about the small acts of bravery that carry us through when the road narrows and the light dims—and the way even in our darkest thickets, there’s beauty if we stop long enough to see it.

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