It’s a hard story to read because you can’t help but be anxious for every one of these characters (even the self-regarding and often cruel Jim). Perhaps only Elizabeth Strout could start with the above and turn it into a poignant story of love and reconciliation, of re-evaluation and realization, and varieties of forgiveness. If this doesn’t sound like a recipe for a happy-families story, then try also mixing in the fact that Zach has just committed what appears to be a hate crime against recently arrived Somali refugees, who themselves undoubtedly find life utterly strange in Shirley Falls, Maine. Susan is sad and embittered by her life and the fact that her husband, Steve, abandoned her and their son, Zach, seven years previous. Bob is also a lawyer in New York but he isn’t famous or wealthy. Jim is now a famous and wealthy New York lawyer. That thought comes with a fair degree of self-loathing and a substantial amount of just plain loathing from his siblings, his twin sister, Susan, and his older brother, Jim. His whole life, Bob Burgess has thought of himself as the boy who, at the age of 4, inadvertently killed his father. Events in childhood shape us for good or ill.
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