After spending a year in prison, Ralph has explicit plans for his first night of freedom: tonight, someone will be held accountable. He goes to murderous lengths to learn the address of his former wife - the woman he blames for his fate and has sworn vengeance against. Determined to bring her to his idea of justice, Ralph's next step is to travel from Florida to Ohio to find his ex-wife's house on Mad River Road.

Also in Florida, Jamie Kellogg wakes from an agonizing nightmare of her mother's funeral and assesses her life: a twenty-nine-year-old woman in a dead-end job, with an ex-husband in Atlanta, a married lover in the hospital, and a virtual stranger in her bed. But this stranger is everything the previous men in her life were not: tender, attentive, and adventurous. After convincing Jamie to quit her miserable job and ditch her judgmental, perfectionist sister, he proposes a romantic getaway. Jamie wonders if this thrilling man might finally be her Prince Charming, as he whisks her away down a daring new path.

As riveting and beguiling as Joy Fielding's previous novels, including Lost, Whispers and Lies, and Puppet, Mad River Road is a novel about courage, truth, and the need to trust one's instincts.