Fifty some years in the future, Meena wakes up with mysterious snake bites and decides she needs to run. She sees the Trail, a series of connected cells meant to draw power from the sea, and decides to walk it from India to Ethiopia where she was born.
In an earlier time, we hear the story of a young girl named Mariama whose mother was trying to escape slavery before Mariama was forced to run on her own, relying on strangers.
Meena's journey across the Trail is transformative, sometimes hallucinatory, and sometime revelatory of the truths that she is running from. I kept thinking that to an extent it's the SF equivalent of Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Meena is also dealing with many different kinds of grief), and wishing it had been around to be our community's Big Read instead. I'm adding it to my list of possibilities for the book-club-in-a-bar one of my coworkers and I lead.
Overall: A
The Girl in the Road will be available May 20