Book description
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 grew up in Michigan and has degrees in mechanical
engineering from the University of Michigan and Stanford. A graduate of
the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is the author of two books:
In the
Electric Eden: Stories
and
Articles of War
, which was included in the Books of the Year in the
Independent
and
Esquire
magazine. His work has appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
New York Times
, and the
Rocky Mountain News,
and his numerous awards include 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.
