The Life We Bury

Narrator Zach Villa's low-key but appealing performance of Eskens's debut mystery is a true audio pleasure. For an English class on biography, Joe Talbert, a freshman at the University of Minnesota, interviews a convicted rapist and murderer who is paroled in a nursing home while dying of cancer. Joe, along with his beautiful but aloof neighbor, Lila, and his autistic brother, Jeremy, investigates the 30-year-old murder. Joe is a thoroughly decent and responsible character, and Villa renders those qualities perfectly. Jeremy is appropriately slightly wooden-voiced, and their mother is a shrewish drunk. Villa ratchets up the drama and pacing as Joe wades into danger when he identifies a likely alternative killer. He is also a master of evoking the cold loneliness of the rural Minnesota landscape. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 15, 2014
Joe Talbert, the hero of Eskens's masterful debut, has worked hard to earn the money to leave home and pursue an education at the University of Minnesota, but his alcoholic mother, who's unable to provide proper care for his autistic brother, keeps demanding his money and time. Joe's life takes a harrowing turn when he visits a nursing home in Richfield, Minn., in search of a subject for a class assignmentâto write a person's biography. Joe chooses one of the only patients not affected with dementia, Carl Iverson, who, he soon discovers, was convicted decades earlier of the murder and rape of a 14-year-old girl. Recently paroled after serving 30 years of a life sentence because he's dying of pancreatic cancer, Carl agrees to tell Joe his story. Prodded by Lila Nash, his attractive college student neighbor, Joe immerses himself in the crime and Carl's trial. As Joe learns more about the events of the murder, he is faced with several threats to his own safety, yet refuses to give up his pursuit of the truth. More complications ensue, until the novel's satisfying resolution. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberley Cameron Agency.