Synopsis
Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of Midwives, presents his most ambitious and multi-layered novel to date examining wildly divisive issues in today s America with his trademark emotional heft and spellbinding storytelling skill.
On a balmy July night in New Hampshire a shot rings out in a garden, and a man falls to the ground, terribly wounded. The wounded man is Spencer McCullough, the shot that hit him was fired accidentally? by his adolescent daughter Charlotte. With this shattering moment of violence, Chris Bohjalian launches the best kind of literate tale: suspenseful, wryly funny, and humane.
(starred review) Bohjalian's new novel is a focused look at how a family copes with a tragic accident and how their own deeply held beliefs and desires affect their relationships with each other. Every summer, Nan Seton has her daughter and son and their respective families up to her New Hampshire summer home. Her daughter, Catherine, is married to Spencer, an animal rights activist, and the two have a precocious 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Her son, John, has two children, quiet 10-year-old Willow and baby Patrick, with his wife, Sara. John also has a secret; he's taken up hunting. When Charlotte, under the influence of stolen beer and pot from a teenage party, finds John's gun, she fires it at what she thinks is a deer in the distance but is actually her father. Though Spencer lives, the damage caused by the gun leaves him crippled, and the company he works for, FERAL, wants to use his injury to rail against guns and hunters, which creates significant rifts in the extended family. Bohjalian's elegant, refined writing makes even the most ordinary details of family life fascinating, and his characters leap off the pages as very real, flawed, but completely sympathetic human beings. Bohjalian manages to examine some very weighty issues without ever coming off as preachy or pedantic. A triumph. -Kristine Huntley