Reef Road: A Novel
A Publishers Weekly Bestseller
Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023
When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.
“Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies—the lies that lead to an even deeper—and more devastating—truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and exposé. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma.” —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.
In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.
Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023
When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.
“Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies—the lies that lead to an even deeper—and more devastating—truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and exposé. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma.” —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author
A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.
In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.
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Community Reviews
Book club attended the readers day of Fernandina Beach Book Fest, and met author Deborah Goodrich Royce. The author discussion was interesting so we decided to read Reef Road for one of our books.
The book is told from two viewpoints, The writer and the wife. Slowly we realize both women are extremely dysfunctional and damaged. It took a while for the different threads to tie together (some thought it meandered a bit too long), but once it was revealed how they were connected it made for an interesting discussion on how the past affects a person, how a single act of violence affects not just the victim but on surrounding family and friends, and generational damage. The book moves through time, from the impactful murder of a little girl in 1948, to the COVID lockdown in 2020. It was interesting to read the lockdown as it brought back many memories of the fear, isolation and events during the shutdown. I enjoyed the book, found the settings to be interesting, and enjoyed the mystery of putting together who may have killed the girl in 1948 and what was up with the writer and wife. Some events in the book didn't make sense, and none of the characters were likeable, but it was an interesting read for me.
The author writes the following passage in her book club kit:
"In Reef Road, I take a true crime—a horrific murder that happened to my mother’s best friend in 1948—and fictionalize it. It is sometimes easier to get to the truth of a question without being hamstrung by the minutiae of facts. By truth I mean the big concepts of our lives. The themes rather than the plot. The themes of Reef Road stretch all the way back to the Bible and beyond. Can we outrun the past. Can we shake off the scars our families carry and stop repeating destructive patterns. Can we do the therapy or the spiritual work to change and grow? I also wanted the book to play out in real time and place as I was writing it during the pandemic lockdown in Palm Beach. I was intrigued by the many juxtapositions of that moment: the sense of claustrophobia from quarantine contrasted with the wide 10 open skies and oceans of Florida; the fecund beauty of surrounding nature contrasted with the sterility we were all desperately trying to achieve with hand sanitizer; the lore of Florida as a land of freedom contrasted with the chokehold of fear engulfing us; the seeming normalcy of life contrasted with what we all knew was distinctly not normal at all. It reminded me of wartime, but not. It was similar to things we’d read about, but not. It was, to use the word we all knocked around that year, unprecedented in our lifetimes."
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