Robert Bausch

There's lots of quiet mourning in Bausch's elegiac novel set in Columbia Beach, Md., a tourist town that's seen better days. County sheriff David Caldwell is in town on a professional mission--to open up the disused jail--and a much more important personal one: to reunite with his 20-year-old son, Todd, who's spent five years in a "juvenile detention center." When he was 13, Todd killed his younger brother, Bobby, and his father, plagued with anguish at the loss, still wonders whether the slaying was accidental or murder. Columbia Beach hardly seems to need a jail, except for the problematic Cecil Edwards, who terrorizes the town with his unpredictable behavior. Less happens than one might think given the novel's aura of violence. The main theme is grief assuaged by the redemptive power of love, embodied in the unusual character of Lindsey Hunter, an adoptee who seeks out her birth mother and discovers a brother (Cecil) and a soul mate (Todd). At times the prose is beautiful--spare and lyrical--and the empathy of Bausch (A Hole in the Earth) for all his characters is impressive...