Girls and roads plural both, as it turns out. Byrne's novel weaves together two different stories. Mariama is a refugee girl whose travels take her to Ethiopia, while Meena is a young Indian woman who, fleeing violence, decides to walk "The Trail"--an ocean-spanning tidal generator that stretches from Mumbai to Djibouti.
We none of us quite knew how to summarize our reaction to this book. It's well written--with the caveat that neither narrator is completely reliable. And the characters are well-drawn--but we found it a little hard to sympathize with them nonetheless.
It's definitely a powerful book, and--one doesn't want to say haunting, but definitely a little hard to get out of the mind. One can easily see why it was awarded the Tiptree. More of our thoughts and, most definitely, SPOILERS, below.
