Tawni O’Dell set Back Roads in Appalachian Pennsylvania, and the rural setting greatly contributes to the Altmyers’ difficult circumstances. The Altmyers are geographically and emotionally isolated: They live alone on a dirt road several miles from their closest neighbors, they have been abandoned by their father’s extended family, and they are unable to procure help from social services, the community, or local financial institutions. There are few job opportunities, and Harley and his sisters are forced to survive on the low pay Harley earns working two full-time jobs, jobs he struggled to get due to the publicity that followed his mother’s criminal trial.

Along with the rural, isolated setting of the Appalachian Mountains, the novel is set in the late 1990s with many references to the pop culture of the time. Harley mentions his desire to watch He-Man cartoons or to receive “a Stretch Armstrong and the Graverobber” (150), two popular toys in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is also a lack of cellphone use among the characters, another indication of the time period. The Altmyers do not own a computer, and Harley mentions learning art, not in school or from the internet, but from a set of note cards his mother, Bonnie, inherited from her mother.