The Road and Beyond is the expanded book-club edition of The Road to You by New York Times & USA Today best-selling author Marilyn Brant. This novel contains not only the completed original story set in the late 1970s but also the brand-new present-day tale of Aurora, now a mature and married woman with two adult sons, who must confront her worst parental nightmare.

One Disappearance Had Been Enough to Last Her a Lifetime....

Aurora Gray is no stranger to tragedy. In the summer of 1976, when she was just 16, her world turned upside down when her big brother, Gideon, and his best friend, Jeremy, disappeared. For two years there was no word from either of them. No trace of their whereabouts. But then, shortly after her high school graduation, she unexpectedly finds her brother's journal and sees that it's been written in again. Recently. By him.

There are secret messages coded within the journal's pages, and Aurora, who is unusually perceptive and a natural puzzle solver, is determined to follow where they lead, no matter what the cost. She confides in the only person she feels might help her interpret the clues: Donovan McCafferty, Jeremy's older brother and a guy she's always been drawn to...even against her better judgment. The two of them set out on a road trip of discovery and danger, heading westward along America's historic Route 66 in search of their siblings and the answers to questions they haven't dared to ask aloud. The mystery they uncover will forever change the course of their lives....

But Now It Was Happening Again

Decades later, in the summer of 2014, 54-year-old Aurora receives a terrifying phone call - her adult son, Charlie is, missing, and this news inevitably brings the memories of her adolescent years rushing back. Haunting recollections she'd hoped to keep buried resurface. Are the choices she made in her youth responsible for her son's disappearance now? And how on earth can she find him?