Penitence, an uncommonly impressive debut from Kristin Koval, has the signposts of a traditional crime novel--a murder, a murderer, criminal justice machinations--but it really isn't one. The book's concern isn't why the killer killed; it's the human behaviors that harm without piercing the skin. This gives Penitence the tension of a suspense novel and the gravitas of a family tragedy.
The novel opens with 13-year-old Nora Sheehan sitting in a Lodgepole, Colo., jail cell. She's there because, using her park-ranger father David's gun, she fatally shot her 14-year-old brother, Nico, in his bed, after which she called 911 to confess to the crime. Nora "loved Nico.... That's why none of this makes sense," their mother, Angie, agonizes to Martine Dumont, an elderly lawyer and erstwhile family friend whom Angie and David tap to defend Nora; as David privately tells Martine, "Angie said you should do it because of Diana."
Who is Diana, and how did her death set off a chain of events that redirected several lives? As Nora's case proceeds, Koval uses a roving point of view to fill out key players' histories. Among the questions that haunt the novel: Why are Martine and her son, Julian, a New York criminal defense attorney who takes over Nora's case, practically estranged? And why did Angie, once the love of Julian's life, leave him? With agile and affecting prose, Penitence asks what, if anything, family members owe one another and whether enough acts of selflessness can lead to atonement. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer