The Road Book Summary (Oprah’s Book Club)

The Road, a book in Oprah’s Book Club is deemed to be author Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he lives today.

In this The Road book summary we are inspired to really get to know the whole story and learn the fate of the two characters. This post-apocalyptic novel chronicles the journey of a father and son as they travel alone through burned America where nothing moves and everything is dark. They set out on a destination to reach the coast where the father believes it to be warmer and offer more safety. Their travels only consist of a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes on their back, food they have scavenged, and one another.

During their journey, they find that they are not alone and come across other humans who have survived but have been forced into cannibalism to sustain their own lives. The reader is forced to imagine a future in which no hope remains and just when you want to give up, you are compelled to keep turning the pages.

The father and son are all that one another has and each are sustained by love of and for the other. Their journey gives us an insight into the best and worst of what we as a human race are capable of: destruction, desperate determination, and survival in its most gentlest form.