Book Review: The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Max Rupert, #1) by Allen Eskens

My Rating:

4.5⭐

“I had come to Hillview looking for a hero and instead I'd found a villain.”

Joe Talbert is a student at the University of Minnesota working on an assignment for his English class. He visits Hillview Manor, a nursing home for the elderly, intending to make acquaintance with an elderly person on whom he could base his assignment - a biographical account of a person’s life highlighting all its significant moments. Once there, initially discouraged on account of most of the residents being in poor health or unable to converse much, he is pointed in the direction of Carl Iverson, convicted rapist and murderer incarcerated for thirty years and recently paroled to the nursing home, terminally ill with cancer and with not much time left to live.

“He would certainly have a story to tell, but was it a story I wanted to write?”

With no other alternative in sight, Joe decides to proceed with Carl, who agrees to meet with him, as the subject for his assignment. When they meet and Joe learns more about Carl, he finds it hard to reconcile this terminally ill, decorated Vietnam War veteran (honorably discharged) with the same man who brutally raped and murdered a fourteen-year-old girl in 1981. He is encouraged by Carl’s ex-army buddy Virgil to dig deeper into the case and with the help of Lila, his neighbor and fellow student who is also dealing with traumatic incidents from her past, he researches Carl’s case after being granted permission to study the case files by Carl and the public defender's office. Carl expresses that he is willing to give Joe his “dying declaration” and when prodded admits that he was innocent of the crime he has been serving time for. On his part, Joe is struggling between holding a job at a local pub, paying for and attending classes, dealing with a selfish and alcoholic mother who is also bi-polar and caring for an autistic younger brother, Jeremy, who his mother mostly neglects but whose Social Security benefits she greedily collects. His interactions with Carl, who encourages him to open up about his own life as he shares details of his, enable him to confront his own demons and past trauma while trying to make sense of his own life and priorities. As Joe and Lila delve deeper into the details surrounding Carl’s case, they uncover much more than had bargained for and and their research soon turns into a full-fledged investigation into the crime and Carl’s conviction- an investigation that comes with its own set of consequences.

As a debut novel, The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens is beyond impressive. Easy flowing narrative, simple straightforward prose and superb characterizations make this an engaging read. Both Joe’s and Carl’s characters have been crafted with so much depth and balance that they seem real to you. Both Joe’s and Carl’s backstories are also very well developed. Joe’s bond with Jeremy is depicted with utmost warmth and compassion. Lila is portrayed as an intelligent and strong young woman with her own traumatic past who though initially convinced of Carl’s guilt does not let that get in the way of helping Joe in his investigation. The plot is not completely unpredictable and some parts are clichéd but the presentation of the story in its totality is extremely well executed. I immensely enjoyed the audio narration by Zack Villa and think that it went very well with Joe’s PoV. This is my first experience with this author’s work and I’m surely going to follow up with the remaining books in the series.

“We are surrounded every day by the wonders of life, wonders beyond comprehension that we simply take for granted. I decided that day that I would live my life—not simply exist. If I died and discovered heaven on the other side, well, that'd be just fine and dandy. But if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found only nothingness, well… I would have wasted my life. I would have wasted my one chance in all of history to be alive.”