At the center of this novel are serious subjects such as death, alienation, poverty, alcoholism, and teen-age pregnancy, but none of these is treated as more than a slight, temporary discomfort. For example, when Julie's mother dies, Julie forgets her quickly, and her father remarries after a few years. Additionally, the novel is subtly moralistic.

Socially acceptable people have only transitory problems that can be solved with dedication to proper values.

Problems are the fault of the individual, never of society, and it is taken for granted that ethnic minorities do not live in town. In spite of these observations, however, the life that Hunt portrays in Up a Road Slowly did exist in many small midwestern towns during the 1940s and 1950s, and many older readers can identify with the novel's small-town atmosphere. In this light, the book is true to a bygone era and...