BookBrowse Reviews So Far Gone by Jess Walter

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In Jess Walter's eighth novel, a former journalist who has retreated off the grid returns to society to track down his missing daughter and rescue his grandchildren from extremists.

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The decision to become a hermit is not one to be made lightly. In 2016, after a 30-year career in environmental journalism, Rhys Kinnick retreated to his grandfather's primitive cabin in the remote woods of Washington. He'd become increasingly fed up with the radicalism and conspiracy theories that were consuming a large swath of Americans, including his son-in-law, Shane. Things came to a head in November 2016; the family's Thanksgiving ended with Rhys punching Shane, then driving away and throwing his iPhone—a "$600 Pop-Tart of modern science"; a "nosy neighbor with a constant supply of scary news, a pocketful of drip-drip dread and festering fear"—out of the car window. For seven years since then, he's been living off the grid, reading hundreds of works of philosophy and synthesizing his thoughts into a book he plans to title The Atlas of Wisdom.

That is, until the day his studious solitude is shattered by the arrival of his grandchildren, Leah and Asher; his daughter Bethany had suddenly left town and asked a neighbor to take them to the cabin. Rhys is alarmed to learn of the family's involvement with the militant Church of the Blessed Fire, particularly its gun-toting "Army of the Lord" men's group, and to learn that thirteen-year-old Leah is to be betrothed to the pastor's nineteen-year-old son.

When he returns to Spokane with his grandchildren, he finds his daughter gone, Shane out searching for her, and a couple of church members tasked by Shane with looking after the children—leading to a showdown between the would-be guardians at Asher's chess tournament. It turns out that "Brother Dean," one of Shane's church buddies, is the "Dominion Eagle Killer" poacher that Rhys had brought to justice through his reportage twelve years earlier. As revenge, Dean has his goon break Rhys' cheekbone with his gun before driving off with Leah and Asher. Now Rhys has to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren—and, as a secondary priority, track down his missing daughter.

Given his busted face and rusty knowledge of the modern world, Rhys decides to enlist the help of his former newspaper colleague and ex-girlfriend, Lucy Park, and a retired cop named Chuck Littlefield, who teaches Rhys how to shoot a gun, just in case (Rhys' only experience with firearms being the air rifle he used to disperse the raccoons occupying his cabin when he first moved in). Chuck suspects that the children are being held at Rampart, the church's training compound in Idaho, and the local sheriff is in cahoots with the church. Rhys and his friends must go in alone.

So Far Gone is composed of nine chapters that each focus on a different character; the rotating third-person narration gives a deep sense of all the main players, but author Jess Walter returns most often to Rhys' perspective. A chapter about Bethany allows Walter to explore the intricacies of the father-daughter relationship, and we get a clear sense throughout the book of the regret Rhys harbors for how he wasn't emotionally supportive when she was a rebellious teenager and then a young adult addicted to drugs. He hopes that he can find her and make amends for how he has repeatedly abandoned her.

For the most part, Walter convincingly steers between a crime caper and a dysfunctional family drama, and there's a wry sense of humor throughout that lightens the novel. Rhys' early battle with the raccoons is an especially funny scene, as is the fact that everyone he meets instantly recognizes that he has a broken "zygomatic arch" (a term for the cheekbone). And as characters go, Rhys is a lovable curmudgeon. I was a little disappointed that there are a couple of shoot-out scenes in the book, because it felt clichéd, if realistic.

After Bethany brought her children to Rhys' cabin to visit their grandfather after a few years of his solitude, she described her father as "so far gone." It's a phrase that could apply to many of these characters as they plunge into extremist ideologies or unhealthy patterns of behavior. Is anyone ever too far gone to be saved? In this convincing depiction of divided America and ailing families, Jess Walter holds out hope that the damage of the past can be dealt with and broken relationships might be restored.

This review first ran in the June 18, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.