Dee is living a charmed life in Connecticut until she and her son are taken hostage while on a college visit in her hometown of Lewiston, Maine. When Dee recognizes her captor, she is forced to face her secret-filled past. The French-Canadian, Catholic community of her youth is filled with betrayals, abandonment, and secret pregnancies. How will she reveal her shameful past to her husband, son, and friends?

Dee makes the hard decision to face her truth and begins a quest to uncover the answers to questions she never dared ask as a child. We meet Dee’s and the young captor’s ancestors who set the tone for the future generations of each of their families. Dee’s father is a master manipulator, and we see how he has forever marked the lives of his best friend and high school girlfriend. As the reader follows Dee, her younger parents, and their friends, The Toll Road North explores the universal truth that we all create our adult persona, and often, no one in our present world really understands where we came from.