Roadwork

Author: Richard Bachman (pseudonym for Stephen King) 

Genre: Contemporary 

Original publication date: March 1981

Book Description (from GoodReads): Barton Dawes’ unremarkable but comfortable existence suddenly takes a turn for the worst. Highway construction puts him out of work and simultaneously forces him out of his home. Dawes isn’t the sort of man who will take an insult of this magnitude lying down. His single-minded determination to fight the inevitable course of progress drives his wife and friends away while he tries to face down the uncaring bureaucracy that has destroyed his once comfortable life.

Thoughts:

This is a very interesting story.

It starts with a man who is tasked with something for his work that he does not agree to. You do not know exactly what is going on. Barton is buying guns, big ones and he is doing it in a suspicious way. 

Barton is having issues due to the newest construction, the road that will make him lose what has been his life for so many years.

His job, his home, and marriage in the line he starts to panic and makes bad calls, at least according to everyone in his life. 

We follow a man who is very uncertain about where his life is going to lead him to. Yet the story is not boring, you feel trapped in his life as well. At the beginning of the story we know there is a plan on the wraps, he is panning something violent but not sure what it is. Then he goes sideways as he continues his normal work and marriage issues. 

It feels very realistic especially the ending. It feels very anti-climatic in a way but real.

**Spoiler**

Even after what he did, the plans did not change and no one really paid attention to his desperate attempt after it stopped being a recent and popular topic.

Realistically, even when someone pleads in a desperate way to be listened to, people only listen right at the moment when its a hot topic afterward people forget and never look back.