The most rewarding book I have read recently has been The Long Walk, by Stephen King.

It is an offbeat novel recording the duration of the titular event, the Long Walk, for its cast of teenage characters (all boys) and the spectators along the way. It is essentially a contest that the boys volunteered for (and could back out of) in which they were made to walk, indefinitely, at a set pace along the highway, with gruesome consequences for those that lagged behind with some frequency. And the last man standing, wins.

If you were one of those boys, and were warned that you were slowing down too much, and could not recover your pace, after the first half minute, you were warned again. After a third warning, you would be summarily shot by soldiers that followed along, in a tank beside you. [They volunteered for this?] The boys could walk off warnings on their record after a few hours, but were set to walk until one boy remained, out of a hundred. A longer walk than you would picture, hundreds of miles, in fact, before the story's end, had been traced. He would become the victor, although it would be a bitter victory, indeed, to be gained while watching everyone around you die, amidst a see of bloodthirsty and uncaring spectators, and sometimes family that wanted to see their son/brother as they walked. And the strangers that wanted a glimpse of some poor boy getting shot, or collapsing under exhaustion or cramps or debilitating and utter madness. Definitely grisly, and nihilistic, but that is how King writes best.

This book gives the reader much to think about, and reveals its twists as the mood merits them. Underneath it all, there is the theme of why, just why would each boy decide to walk, whether it be out of insanity or morbidity or whatever else, and what instinctively motivated them to follow through, or to surrender to the inevitability of death. After all, the body is not meant to walk such a distance with little food and absolutely no sleep. It is nearly impossible event to fathom what effects that could have on a person, and yet, King writes so brilliantly centered on his subjects' minds that the readers can feel, can know what it would be like, if they were in the shoes (and later, bare feet) of those boys stoically taking the Long Walk.

And it keeps you right along the dusty, potholed asphalt until the very last mile.