One-Lane Bridge

One-Lane Bridge by Dan Krzyzkowski 436 pages

What a great way to start 2023 with an exceptional novel by an unknown writer and a six-star read! I won the book in a giveaway contest on Shelf Awareness. It sounded interesting, and I like to get free books.  I must admit that heart sank when it arrived in the mail. 

Self-published! YIKES! That usually means a talented writer, but the manuscript isn’t polished. I can say though that this one couldn’t be more polished! I also must admit that I perused the reviews on Amazon before reading to see how bad it is. I mean, 436 pages is a lot to read of a less-than-perfect manuscript. 

I wish I had written the reviewer’s name down, but once I read this sentence, “I traveled to so many places both inside and outside of the human heart through the pages of One-Lane Bridge.”, I knew I was in for a treat!

Thanks to encouragement from his dad on the day he died, the now twenty-three-year old Simon Kozlowski is taking a gap year between college and law school. His dad wanted him to work for a year with his hands in order that he may truly understand potential clients. He wanted Simon to do hard work, like the majority of Americans. Simon secured a job doing road construction in New Hampshire.

He has to take several transportation modes to get to the job site from his home in New Jersey. That part of the book was a tad slow, but don’t give up. If you, like me, find it tedious, keep reading, it will be worth your time!

Unfortunately, when Simon arrived, the job had been eliminated. The project he was supposed to work on was not going to happen.

Simon had to figure out what he was going to do. He was stuck in Swan Like, an up-scale, Hallmark-esque small town. He wanders into a diner for a piece of pie. As he tells the diner’s owner, Molly, his woes, one of the area’s residents, Alisha Caldwell, overhears him and offers him a job as a “companion” for her five-year-old son, Corey. Companion is another word for nanny or manny.

Since he is out of options, Simon agrees. It’s a nanny job, but soon, Simon finds himself becoming attached to Corey… and to his mother…and to the town.

Secrets of the town, of the Caldwell’s, and even Simon’s own family back in New Jersey begin to unravel.

This novel is character-drive, and soon I was enchanted with these characters. To me it was reminiscent of Robert James Waller's novel, "The Bridges of Madison County. Therefore  “One-Lane Bridge” received 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.