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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
A murder witnessed by the protagonist; depicted with restraint but central to the plot
Language
Barely any
Mild profanity
Sexual Content
Barely any
Brief adult relationships; no significant sexual content
Substance Use
None
No substance use
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Parental abandonment by arrest, loss of a twin sister, and witnessing murder as formative trauma; Dell's entire narrated life is colored by this single crisis
What this book is about
In 1960, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons watches his parents — a floundering ex-military man and a reluctant housewife — prepare for a disastrous bank robbery. When they're arrested, Dell and his twin sister are separated: she runs south, he's smuggled across the border to Saskatchewan, where he ends up working for an odd, disturbing American named Remlinger. Ford's expansive, quietly devastating novel is a meditation on how one event shapes an entire life.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Parental arrest and family dissolution
Child witnesses a murder
Loss and abandonment as pervasive themes
Reader Verification
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