The Road Home

In this gentle coming-of-middle-age tale, Ford (Last Summer) follows a gay Boston photographer recuperating at his father’s smalltown Vermont home, where he’s drawn into an eerie Civil War mystery. Following a car accident that shattered his leg, 40-year-old Burke Crenshaw is less than happy to find himself in his childhood bedroom (still sporting a Raiders of the Lost Ark movie poster) for six weeks, tended to by his father, Ed, and Ed’s girlfriend, Lucy. Resentful of his country convalescence and feeling restless, Burke finds relief in a photography project inspired by Lucy’s deceased husband’s book on Vermont’s Civil War militias. Fascinated by the love letter of soldier Amos Hague, Burke launches a quest to uncover the truth about the infantryman and his fiancé, with assistance from a witty smalltown librarian and the 20-year-old son of an old high school crush. Though Ford fails to follow through on a promising supernatural twist, he crafts an involving if low-key slice-of-life narrative about the importance of being true to one’s self. (June)