A bestselling author explores art, justice, and grief as he questions what makes a story true. "Awhile back, I stopped writing fiction." This is one of the first things the narrator has to say about himself. After a description of the (implausibly brief) existential crisis that followed the end of his fiction-writing career, he addresses the reader directly: "If that leaves you wondering about this book--wondering if I'm kidding, or playing a game, or if I've wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of autofiction--everything here is real." This may look like reassurance, but it's actually a warning. Using a young girl's murder as an inciting incident, Guterson tests the reader's understanding of story, truth, and how the two intersect. The narrator's father, Royal, is an attorney approaching the end of his own career. When Royal agrees to defend a White woman accused of killing her Black adopted daughter, the narrator becomes intrigued by the case. Again and again, his father cautions him that the real justice system doesn't function the way it does on TV, but then a judge delivers a speech that provides exactly the kind of moral satisfaction we want from crime shows. This speech serves as a bookend to an earlier passage in which the accused woman's mother rants about all the ways in which White Christians are oppressed in contemporary America. The shape of this text--a single, uninterrupted paragraph spread over multiple pages--strains credulity, but its content is instantly recognizable to anyone who pays even scant attention to right-wing media. Guterson seems to be asking why righteously elegant oration seems realistic when it's coming from the bench but an equally impassioned soliloquy delivered in the living room of a double-wide in rural Washington feels like a literary contrivance. The author subverts expectations over and over again. After the narrative begins to take the shape of a courtroom drama, the story shifts back to the personal concerns of the narrator--including a lot of thought and conversation about the craft of writing--for so long that it seems possible that the dead child has been forgotten. She has not. It's just that real life seldom has an obvious beginning, middle, and end. The book closes with the narrator turning toward his wife in the dark while she whispers, "We can love people….What else is there?" This might feel like an easy out for a story in which hateful people and dumb mortality wield their power. Or it can feel like a gentle acknowledgement of our collective precarity. Needfully discomfiting. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

What defines a meaningful life? The narrator of this searching and languid novel looks to his father as exhibit A. While the narrator's own existence "clearly smacked now of bourgeois retirement," he finds inspiration in his 84-year-old Dad, a criminal attorney who is readying for what he suspects will be his final case. In 2011, an Ethiopian girl adopted by a family in Skagit County, Washington, died of hypothermia. Guterson (Problems with People, 2014) fictionalizes this real-life tragedy to fuel the initial momentum for this deeply reflective novel. The details of what emerges as a horrific child abuse case are unsettling and made even more so by the sudden shift of gears to the narrator's life once Dad's involvement in the trial ends. The abrupt change of perspective feels disorienting but provides effective ballast for the rest of the story. The looping writing--one of the sentences is 243 words long--demands attention and a slower pace, deepening the novel's impact. Guterson includes a quote from Okakura Kakuzō's classic, The Book of Tea: "Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things." A touching reminder to find beauty in the mundane despite the relentless crush of the horrific.

The death from hypothermia of an adopted Ethiopian girl, Abeba "Abigail" Addisu, while in the care of her Christian fundamentalist parents, Betsy and Delvin Harvey, drives this outstanding literary thriller from PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars). Betsy and Delvin, who live in rural Skagit Country north of Seattle, are arrested on homicide charges, and Betsy is put on trial for murder. On a break from fiction writing, the unnamed narrator accompanies his elderly criminal attorney father, Royal, who has agreed to defend Betsy, for the pretrial interview of Betsy. When Royal dies before the final verdict, his son picks up the loose ends of his father's life while continuing to follow the case, which exposes the cruel conditions in which Abeba suffered. The narration is the novel's main draw. Equal parts philosophical, humane, and self-deprecating, it powerfully speaks to the ineffable contradiction of living a meaningful life. Guterson sensitively explores religion, white privilege, and justice while examining with realism and empathy the bond between parents and their children. With its simple message of hope, this novel will linger with readers long after the final page. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (Jan.)

In this latest from the author who launched his career with the popular Snow Falling on Cedars, an Ethiopian girl adopted by a white fundamentalist Christian family is found dead of hypothermia in her Seattle backyard and her adoptive mother put on trial for murder. She is defended by an octogenarian criminal attorney whose son narrates the story as he chauffeurs his father around town. How did it feel for Abeba to find herself in an environment so far from--and so different from--her homeland? Why did the lawyer take what will be his final case? And what does the town think of these events?