The Only Road There Is

"Rebecca Bailey's novella The Only Road There Is arrives at the perfect moment in this national season of doom and gloom. A narrator whose 80-year-old mother is an internet junkie is certainly going to cheer me up. Rebecca Bailey may be the only American fiction writer whose unafraid sense of humor rings out loud and clear in these times. Narrator Brenda Marlene Simpkins' spoken language is fresh as a cold mountain stream as she tells the story of her road trip from Kentucky to 'out west' with her dear old and frustrating mother. These two women-on-the road are American original characters as striking and necessary as Huck and Jim or Thelma and Louise. Bailey's brilliant, lively writing in a unique regional idiom (Kentucky Modern, it would be called) lifts The Only Road There Is to the realm of artistry. I think this book establishes Rebecca Bailey high on the list of new-century American fiction writers. She is a fine poet, too."
—Gurney Norman, author of Divine Right's Trip and Kinfolks

"The Only Road There Is sparkles with the same rare, creative energy that makes Rebecca Bailey a prize-winning short story writer and poet." 
—John Engle, author of Tree People, Modern Odyssey, and numerous other poetry collections