Review Detail

Avi is back for another interesting historical fiction in The Road to Nowhere. I knew absolutely nothing about silver mining or the economic panic of 1893, but Avi weaves the small details of daily life effortlessly to give readers a good snapshot of the times.
Through brothers Ollie and Gus’s life in a boomtown, we see how cheap life is valued and how loose the law is, and how most struggle to survive. The story is focused on Ollie wanting to strike it rich to ease his widowed mother’s burden. However, the foul Mr. Gatchett has a stranglehold on the whole town and won’t allow anyone to be prospecting for silver outside of his authority.
Interestingly, Ollie’s focus is on finding silver and establishing a mine, but the world does not revolve around his wants, and events lead to a completely different outcome than expected.
The book is a respectable page length for Middle-Grade readers. The dialogue exchanges lead to many quickly read pages filled with white space that can help encourage a young reader that they are making good progress. I have enjoyed many of Avi’s books for his captivating voice and masterful way of bringing the past to life. This setting and time period might be a hard sell for today’s Middle-Grade readers' interests, but Avi does a good job bringing forth this little-known aspect of history.