amazon:
Jason Dark's life is going far better than he expected. He has revived both his family's small California winery and his dead relationship with his wife. Even his teenage son seems content. But he still dreams, inexplicably, of disappearing and is compelled to take secret, solo drives at the day's end. When Jason skids into a boy one night, he procrastinates about turning himself in, persuading himself that the truth will change nothing: the youth is dead, and now he needs to protect his family. "I don't remember why I had decided that I couldn't confide in the woman who was rubbing my hands with her hands, trying to warm me up. I don't recall what exactly I was thinking, but I can remember the heaviness that suddenly weighed me down, like my arms were stone, like my legs were stone, and I do remember that I had to slide down to the floor of the bathroom. This was the moment when I began to lie." Peter Gadol is up to the constraints of the literate, internal thriller, as well as the hard task of enlisting the reader's (occasionally frustrated) sympathy for this fallen man. He is also good on physical labor--composing energetic, loving descriptions of vineyard tensions and nature's fickleness. Even if The Long Rain contains a few too many coincidences, doublings, and easy solutions, it provokes one to consider the fragility of relationships, the quick development of doubt and portrayal, and the inevitability of disaster.