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As a boy, Ellis Barstow heard the sound of the collision that killed Christopher, his older half brother - an accident that would haunt him for years. A decade later, searching for purpose after college, Ellis takes a job as a forensic reconstructionist, investigating and re-creating the details of fatal car accidents - under the guidance of the irascible John Boggs, who married Christopher's girlfriend. Ellis takes naturally to the work, fascinated by the task of trying to find reason, and justice, within the seemingly random chaos of smashed glass and broken lives. But Ellis is harboring secrets of his own - not only his memory of the car crash that killed his brother but also his feelings for Boggs's wife, Heather, which soon lead to a full-blown affair. And when Boggs inexplicably disappears, Ellis sets out to find him... and to try to make sense of the crash site his own life has become.
Raising a host of universal questions - Can science ever explain matters of the heart? Can we ever escape the gravitational pull of the past? - Nick Arvin's novel is at once deeply moving and compulsively readable.
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"Impressive... The novel is suffused with sharp turns and minute, telling details that add up to a riveting consideration of risk and responsibility." - Publishers Weekly
"Accidents are everywhere and unavoidable, Arvin means to say, but ironically his characters feel overly controlled." - Kirkus Reviews
"Nick Arvin has written a book with a heart like a vise. The detectives here are engineers, the crimes are traffic accidents, and the law is the law of physics. But somehow - don't ask me how, I was too busy turning the pages - The Reconstructionist becomes a contemplation of the broadest questions of life: How do we love one another? How do we survive the accidents of our lives? Or is it fate? Nick Arvin is an immensely gifted writer, and he has given us a thrilling, soulful book." - David Wroblewski, author of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
This information about The Reconstructionist was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nick Arvin is the award-winning author of the novel Articles of War, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Esquire, and the story collection In the Electric Eden. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he also holds degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and Stanford, and has worked in both automotive and forensic engineering. He lives in Denver, Colorado. Visit him online at www.nickarvin.com.
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