Book Review: The Broken Road

This relatively new series by Richard Paul Evans, The Broken Road series, begins with an intriguing premise, but takes the entire first book to get to the meat of the matter. Much back story brings the reader to the question of what if you could start over afresh? Charles James, a descendant of outlaw Jesse James, leads wealth seminars and makes a butt-load of money (in many ways, its own form of robbery). In this first installment, we meet him out on the open road of Route 66 and learn that he was presumed dead and has taken this new-found freedom to trek the "broken road." But, the majority of the book is spent laying out his back-story and what led him to disappear and walk from Chicago to California. Bad choices abound. Love is found and lost. The Almighty Dollar is chased. I'm not saying I won't continue with the series (as always, I'm eager for any clean read in audio form), but I'm assuming it will get more to the heart of the matter in the following books of the series. The back cover promises, "an engrossing, contemplative story of redemption and grace and the power of second chances." I'm hoping to get to the redemption soon, because most of book one was the road to ruin. Thankfully, the story was absorbing enough to keep my feet trekking away on my treadmill miles.