DETOUR HOME

Eli Marsh, twelve, is separated from his family at a highway rest stop when his grandmother Ruth drives away before anyone notices. Over three days across Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire, Eli discovers the life Ruth lived before she was anyone's grandmother: the house on Maple Street now a dental office, the former student she has not seen in thirty years, the hill where his grandfather photographed the same view for forty years. When Eli's phone dies on the second night and Ruth briefly loses herself to memory, he sits on a motel room floor and understands for the first time what his mother carries every day. On the third morning, he navigates from memory, using the logic of Ruth's routes. They arrive at the family reunion two days late, from the wrong direction, on schedule by Ruth's reckoning.