Back Roads (novel)
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Back Roads (novel)
''Back Roads'' is the 1999 novel by the American writer Tawni O'Dell, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in March 2000. Plot introduction Harley Altmyer, a nineteen-year-old, has to care for his three sisters as his mother is in jail for killing his abusive father. Living in the coal town of Laurel Falls in backwoods Western Pennsylvania, he lusts after a mother of two who lives down the lane. Plot summary Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking beer and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters after the shooting death of his physically abusive father and the arrest of his mother. Life is further complicated when he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two down the road. Family secrets and unspoken truths threaten to consume him as his obsession deepens and she responds unearthing a ser ...
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Tawni O'Dell
Tawni O'Dell (born 1964) is an American novelist. Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States. O'Dell was born in the same town as movie actor Jimmy Stewart. The first in her family to attend college, she graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism. She disliked journalism and preferred writing fiction. She lived for many years in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania, where she now lives with her two children. O'Dell's literary career began with uncertainty. In 13 years she wrote six unpublished novels and collected over 300 rejection slips before her first novel Back Roads was published to enormous acclaim. The July 24th 2000 issue of People magazine featured her in a story and mentioned praise that Oprah Winfrey gave proclaiming her not only as "an author but a writer". Works * '' Back Roads'', novel (New York: Viking, 2000) * '' Coal Run'', novel (New York: Viking, 2004) * ''Sister Mine ''Sister Mine'' is a 2007 novel by the ...
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Back Roads (2018 Film)
''Back Roads'' is a 2018 American drama film directed by Alex Pettyfer in his directorial debut. The screenplay by Tawni O'Dell and Adrian Lyne was adapted from O'Dell's bestselling novel of the same name. Starring Alex Pettyfer, Jennifer Morrison, Nicola Peltz, Robert Patrick and Juliette Lewis, the film centers on a young man living in the Pennsylvania backwoods who must care for his three younger sisters after his mother is arrested for murdering his father. ''Back Roads'' premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films. It received a limited release in the United States on December 7, 2018, and was later released on video on demand and digital. Plot After his mother is imprisoned for killing his abusive father, Harley Altmyer is left to care for his three younger sisters in rural Pennsylvania. Harley forgoes his college education, working dead-end jobs to pay the bills and raise his siblings, which include the rebellious and promiscuou ...
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Novels Set In Pennsylvania
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term Romance (literary fiction), "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek novel, Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was ...
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Robert Patrick
Robert Hammond Patrick (born November 5, 1958) is an American actor. Known for portraying villains and honorable authority figures, he is a Saturn Award winner with four other nominations. Patrick dropped out of college when drama class sparked his interest in acting, and entered film in 1986. After playing a supporting role in ''Die Hard 2'' (1990), he came to prominence as the T-1000, the antagonist of '' Terminator 2: Judgment Day'' (1991)—a role he reprised for cameo appearances in ''Wayne's World'' (1992) and ''Last Action Hero'' (1993). His other film credits include ''Fire in the Sky'' (1993), ''Striptease'' (1996), ''Cop Land'' (1997), ''The Faculty'' (1998), ''Spy Kids'' (2001), '' Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle'' (2003), ''Ladder 49'' (2004), ''Walk the Line'' (2005), ''Flags of Our Fathers'' (2006), '' We Are Marshall'' (2006), '' Bridge to Terabithia'' (2007), ''The Men Who Stare at Goats'' (2009), and ''Safe House'' (2012). In television, Patrick played FBI Speci ...
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Nicola Peltz
Nicola Anne Peltz Beckham (born January 9, 1995) is an American actress. Primarily known for her roles in dramatic film and television, she has performed in some blockbuster adaptations and has since been nominated for a Young Hollywood Award. She is married to Brooklyn Beckham, the son of football player David Beckham and pop singer Victoria Beckham. Peltz is best known for her roles as Katara in ''The Last Airbender'' (2010), Bradley Martin in the A&E drama series '' Bates Motel'' (2013–2015), and Tessa Yeager in '' Transformers: Age of Extinction'' (2014). Early life Peltz was born in Westchester County, New York, the daughter of billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz and model Claudia Heffner. She has one sister and six brothers, including former professional hockey player Brad Peltz and actor Will Peltz. She also has two half-siblings from her father's previous marriages. She was raised in a Jewish household (her father's faith). Career Peltz made her film debut as Macken ...
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Juliette Lewis
Juliette Lake Lewis (born June 21, 1973) is an American actress and alternative rock singer. She is known for her portrayals of offbeat characters, often in films with dark themes. Lewis became an "it girl" of American cinema in the early 1990s, appearing in various independent and arthouse films. Her accolades include a Pasinetti Award, one Academy Award nomination, one Golden Globe nomination, and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. The daughter of character actor Geoffrey Lewis, Lewis began her career in television at age 14 before making her feature film debut with a small part in ''My Stepmother Is an Alien'' (1988). This was followed by a more prominent role as Audrey Griswold in ''National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'' (1989). She then garnered international notice for her portrayal of Danielle Bowden in Martin Scorsese's remake of '' Cape Fear'' (1991), which saw Lewis nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, as well as the Golden Globe in the sam ...
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Jennifer Morrison
Jennifer Marie Morrison is an American actress, director, producer, and former child model. She is mainly known for her roles as Dr. Allison Cameron in the medical-drama series ''House'' (2004–2012) and Emma Swan in the ABC adventure-fantasy series ''Once Upon a Time'' (2011–2018). She has also portrayed Zoey Pierson, one of Ted Mosby's love interests, on the comedy series ''How I Met Your Mother'', Winona Kirk, mother of James T. Kirk in the 2009 science-fiction film ''Star Trek'', and Tess Conlon in the 2011 sports drama film ''Warrior''. She made her feature-film directorial debut with '' Sun Dogs'' (2017). Early life Morrison was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in Arlington Heights, Illinois. She is the oldest of three children; her sister, Julia, is a singer-songwriter and music band therapist, and her brother, Daniel, is a high-school band director. Her father, David, is a retired music teacher and high-school band director who was named Teacher of the Year by t ...
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Alex Pettyfer
Alexander Richard Pettyfer (born 10 April 1990) is a British actor and model. He appeared in school plays and on television before being cast as Alex Rider, the main character in the 2006 film version of ''Stormbreaker''. Pettyfer was nominated for a Young Artist Award and an Empire Award for his role. Pettyfer has been seen as a model in several advertising campaigns for Burberry and has starred in a number of other films, including ''I Am Number Four,'' '' Beastly'', and ''Magic Mike''. He starred as Brody in the Netflix science fiction miniseries ''The I-Land''. Early life Pettyfer was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, the son of Lee Robinson, an actress and Richard Pettyfer, an actor. Both parents met while performing in London's West End in ''West Side Story'', ''Cats'' and ''Miss Saigon''. He has a younger half-brother, James Ireland from his mother's remarriage to Michael J. Ireland, a retired builder and property developer. Pettyfer was brought up in Esher and ...
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Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. History Guinzburg, a Harvard graduate and former employee of Simon and Schuster and Oppenheimer, a graduate of Williams College and Alfred A. Knopf, founded Viking in 1925 with the goal of publishing nonfiction and "distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest." B. W. Huebsch joined the firm shortly afterward. Harold Guinzburg's son Thomas became president in 1961. The firm's name and logo—a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent—were meant to evoke the ideas of adventure, exploration, and enterprise implied by the word "Viking." In August 1961, they acquired H.B. Huesbsch, which maintained a list of backlist titles from authors such as James Joyce an ...
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Adrian Lyne
Adrian Lyne (born 4 March 1941) is an English film director, writer and producer. Having begun his career directing 1970s television commercials, Lyne made well-received short films which were entries in the London Film Festival. He started making feature length films in 1980 and is known for sexually charged stories and characters, often using stylised light. He is best known for directing ''Flashdance'', ''9½ Weeks'', '' Fatal Attraction'', ''Jacob's Ladder'' and ''Indecent Proposal''. For directing ''Fatal Attraction'', Lyne received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. Early life Lyne was born in Peterborough, Northamptonshire (now Cambridgeshire) and raised in London. He was educated at Highgate School in North London;Highgate School Register 7th Edn 1833–1988, Ed. Patrick Hughes & Ian F Davies 1989 together with his younger brother, Oliver Lyne (1944–2005), a classical scholar and academic at the University of Oxford. Their father was a teacher at ...
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Western Pennsylvania
Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic and cultural center. Erie, Altoona, and Johnstown are its other metropolitan centers. As of the 2010 census, Western Pennsylvania's total population is nearly 4 million. Although the Commonwealth does not designate Western Pennsylvania as an official region, since colonial times it has retained a distinct identity not only because of its geographical distance from Philadelphia, the beginning of Pennsylvania settlement, but especially because of its topographical separation from the east by virtue of the Appalachian Mountains, which characterize much of the western region. The strong cultural identity of Western Pennsylvania is reinforced by the state supreme court holding sessions in Pittsburgh, in addition to Harrisburg and Philadelphia ...
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