October 23, 2017
In Yarbrough’s intricate and satisfying novel (after The Realm of Last Chances), the lives of two ordinary men intersect during one winter night in Poland. Richard Brennan is an affable, middle-age American journalist whose chief problems are the vagaries of the newspaper business and his apartment building’s lack of elevator. A fateful night in December 2006 finds him decorating a Christmas tree with his daughter and then heading to dinner with his wife and in-laws. Meanwhile, the kindhearted but unlucky Bogdan Baranowski, defeated by the shuttering of all but one of his chain of grocery stores (not to mention his near-wordless marriage), plans to rob a wealthy developer to save his last store from bankruptcy. Richard and Bogdan are unexpectedly drawn together when a car accident on a snowy road outside Krakow alters both men’s lives and links them permanently. The story tracks Bogdan and Richard through the following years, revealing how both come to grips with that night, grapple with their senses of self, and cope with the repercussions of long-held guilt. Yarbrough crafts intriguing subplots involving a murder investigation and property crime, set against a backdrop of 2016 politics. Though the prose is straightforward, the characters are compelling and the narrative steers clear of easy moralizing or predictable endings.
