The Low Road - Softcover

Unflinching, relentless, and powerfully written, The Low Road paints a searing portrait of two desperate men thrown together by chance as they both try to flee their troubled pasts. This savage noir surprises and grips at every turn. Young petty criminal Lee wakes up in a seedy motel with a bullet in his side, a suitcase of stolen money, and only a hazy idea of how he got there. Wild, a drug-addicted doctor also taking refuge at the motel, is forced by the proprietor to save Lee's life--and move him out before the police show up. Connected by this twist of fate, the two strangers go on the lam, becoming the wariest of traveling companions. As the two men reflect on how they arrived at this point in their lives, the past pursues them in the form of an aging gangster determined to retrieve Lee's suitcase of money--and punish him for the theft. Award-winning and critically acclaimed, The Low Road seduces readers with its poetic language and unique and indelible protagonists.

The Low Road, Chris Womersley's debut novel, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Book in 2008. His second novel, Bereft, won the ABIA for Best Literary Fiction 2011, the Indie Award for Best Fiction 2011, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, Australia's most prestigious literary award. His fiction and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Granta New Writing 14, Best Australian Stories 2006, Best Australian Stories 2010, The Monthly, and The Age. In 2007, one of his short stories won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize. Womersley lives and writes in Sydney.