A superb novel about secrets, survival and the need to atone
At a loose end after college, Ellis Barstow drifts back to his hometown and takes a job as a reconstructionist – investigating and recreating the details of fatal car accidents. Ellis forms a bond with his boss John Boggs, who believes that if two cars meeting at an intersection can be called an accident, then anything can – where we live, what we do, even who we fall in love with.
For Ellis these things are certainly no accident and he harbours two secrets of his own. The car crash that killed his half-brother is a memory that still haunts him, and his feelings for John’s wife threaten to blow apart the men’s lives. As Ellis tries to make sense of his own life, the story’s momentum builds to a desperate race towards confrontation, reconciliation and survival.
Nick Arvin is the author of three books: In the Electric Eden, Articles of War, and The Reconstructionist. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Rocky Mountain News and has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Boyd Award from the American Library Association, the Colorado Book Award, and fellowships from the Michener-Copernicus Society, the Isherwood Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he is on the faculty of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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