Annie is running out of options, but giving up isn’t part of the plan in Roadshow by Nikki Ervice, a debut novel about ambition, survival, and the uncertain road between the life we imagined and the one we end up living. When an unexpected letter from her estranged, dying mother sends Annie on a hero’s journey from New York to Alaska, she sets out with little money, an unreliable car, and no real idea how she’s going to get there. What follows is a road trip that tests her judgment and endurance while offering a glimpse into the precarious existence of someone who has spent much of her life living on the margins.
Annie’s life in New York hasn’t turned out the way she hoped. She came to the city with dreams of dancing, but making a living as a performer has proved more difficult than she anticipated. At Club X, she performs burlesque as Dog-Faced Girl, wearing a mask that allows her to dance without exposing her face. It’s a compromise that lets her hold on to the one thing she loves while earning enough to get by. When a letter arrives from Vera, the mother who abandoned her as an infant, Annie finds herself confronting a past she knows almost nothing about. Her father, who raised her in Alaska, had kept Vera’s identity and history largely to himself. But now that Annie has received a letter from her dying mother, the chance to meet the woman who abandoned her as an infant gives her a reason to put her New York ambitions on hold and make the long journey home.
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