The Silk Road Author:Jane Summer Hell is a real place. Hell is a suburb. A billboard towers over, reading: have you been seriously injured? For the residents of Hell at the end of the 1960s, the metaphoric nature of their existence goes virtually unnoticed. But it doesn't slip past Paige Bergman, an unpredictable, turbulent adolescent hurtling toward adulthood, weathering a... more »n overbearing and jealous mother and a zombified father, a Buddhist motorcycle-riding lothario, coddled and clueless friends, and, above all, the shivering effects of alienation. As the demons of boredom and dislocation begin to hook in their nails, Paige's wish for salvation is granted when she stumbles upon an ethereal woman at the wheel of a blue Buick Skylark. Spellbound by the beguiling-and pained-Mrs. Gallagher, Paige sees her fantasies turn into fact, her observation into obsession. What happens after the two meet is as strange, disfiguring, and ultimately emancipating as the explosive flowering of one true love.« less