num_pages: 320
description: Love can make people do terrible things. Welcome to Spencerville Virginia 1977. Eight-year-old Rocky worships his older brother Paul. Sixteen and full of rebel cool Paul spends his days cruising in his Chevy Nova blasting Neil Young cigarette dangling from his lips arm slung around his beautiful troubled girlfriend. Paul is happy to have his younger brother as his sidekick. Then one day in an act of vengeance against their father Paul picks up Rocky from school and nearly abandons him in the woods. Afterward Paul disappears. Seven years later Rocky is a teenager himself. He hasnt forgotten being abandoned by his boyhood hero but hes getting over it with the help of the wealthy neighbors daughter ten years his senior who has taken him as her lover. Unbeknownst to both of them their affair will set in motion a course of events that rains catastrophe on both their families. After a mysterious double murder brings terror and suspicion to their small town Rocky and his family must reckon with the past and find out how much forgiveness their hearts can hold.
language: English
title: Only Love Can Break Your Heart
publisher: Algonquin Books