Item: Life We Bury
Rating: 4.00
Author: dpfaef

by Allen Eskens

A USA Today bestseller and book club favorite! College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerab

The Life We Bury is a nice change of pace "who done it". Joe Talbert, brother to an autistic teenager, son to an alcoholic mother, and college student has an assignment for one of his classes to write a biography of a person. On a whim Joe stops at a nursing home where he is improbably (isn’t that why it’s called fiction) introduced to a convicted murderer.
Carl Iverson, has been released from prison because he is dying of cancer. Thirty years ago, he was convicted of murdering a teenage girl. Carl agrees to tell Joe his story, as Joe hears more and more he begins to suspect that there is more to the story than Carl is telling him. Joe with the help of his attractive college student (but I don’t want to get involved) neighbor start piecing together a different version of Carl’s story.

A good debut novel.

This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal

Life We Bury

by Allen Eskens

Reviewed by dpfaef on Oct 26, 2016

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