Review: Michael Thomas Ford's "The Road Home" Takes Some Wrong Turns

It's an admittedly provocative set-up for a book: a 40-year-old man, Burke, is in a car accident and must return to his hometown to recuperate; while there, he runs into Mars, his best friend in high school, a straight guy, with whom he had a fleeting sexual encounter while drunk years ago. Soon Burke begins a secret affair with Mars' 20-year-old son, Will.

Better still, The Road Home (Kensington Books, $24) is written by bestselling author Michael Thomas Ford, a master of gay romance. His books are almost always page-turners.

The book is definitely readable, written in Ford's trademark breezy style. But somewhere along the way, the plot takes several strange turns. 

Weirdly, the most important storyline in the book, the romance with the 20-year-old, never really goes anywhere.

Did the author simply not want to "go there" and have the two obvious lovers get together because of the differences in their ages? That could've been an interesting angle right there, but a different reason is given for things not really working out (even if it seems out-of-character for Will).

Weirder still, the book's other potentially interesting storyline, Burke's relationship with Mars, is never developed at all. Clearly, Burke was in love with Mars, but the character barely exists, in either the past or the present. There's never any resolution, or anything approaching a love triangle, because there's hardly any contact between Burke and Mars.

Indeed, except for a by-the-numbers fight with a homophobic dad (also late in the game), the book has very little dramatic conflict at all.

Instead, there's a gay-related mystery about a set of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fiance (with a hint of the supernatural), a second, more subdued romance starting later in the book, and a tangential exploration of a group for bears and "radical faeries."

An author's note indicates some interest in this latter group on the part of the author, but coming out of the blue the way it does, it seems like it belongs in a different book.

Fans of the author may still enjoy The Road Home, which is sort of a meandering, slice-of-life look at a couple of characters, with a small mystery element. But be forewarned that it isn't the story it promises to be, and it simply doesn't have the momentum of Ford's other work.