Harper Collins
Published June 10, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Though this novel is not marketed as crime fiction, it does include several crimes, including a murder, and it has the twists, turns, and outbreaks of violence to make it thrilling, though it’s shorter than most thrillers these days. It’s the latest novel by Jess Walter, whose first book was nonfiction about a Christian fundamentalist anti-government sect (Every Knee Shall Bow, 1995, based on his reporting as he covered the Ruby Ridge standoff with federal agents). His second book was a mystery set in Spokane (Over Tumbled Graves, 2001). Ever since, he’s written fiction in a variety of styles. In this case, he has seized on the moment and written about our deep political divisions and how they affect one family, caught up in a religious anti-government cult. But it is not a standard political thriller, with good guys riding the rescue when the bad guys need a comeuppance. It’s a lot more complicated than that – and in some ways, much simpler.
Rhys Kinnock, a divorced and disillusioned environmental journalist, is frantically angry about the direction the country has taken, embodied in his ignorant son-in-law Shane, who embraces conspiracy theories along with evangelical Christianity. One Thanksgiving, though Rhys promised his ex-wife and daughter to avoid discussions of politics and religion, it all comes to a head. He punches Shane out, and in a fit of despair moves to a remote cabin in the woods. There, he gives up modern life, living off the grid without a computer or phone, with only his books for company. That’s where, years into his self-imposed hermitage, a woman shows up with two children he doesn’t recognize – his grandchildren. Their mother asked a neighbor to take them to their grandfather before she disappeared.
Unsure what exactly is going on, Rhys agrees to take them in, but when they all go to a chess tournament that the nine-year-old boy wants to compete in, a pair of thugs show up. They insist on taking the children to their father, who has moved to an armed compound in the mountains gearing up for a final showdown with the government. Sensing this is not a plan his missing daughter would approve of, Rhys refuses to let them go – and is beaten up, the kids taken away from him by force.
He resolves to get them back and find his daughter, first getting enthusiastic assistance from an ex-cop with bipolar disorder, then relying on a Native couple he has befriended in his exile, leading to a shootout in the mountains and a confrontation at a music festival in British Columbia. The conflict eventually reaches Rhys’s isolated cabin.
The opening pages may convince a reader they are in for a political screed against right-wing politics, but Walter is up to something far more subversive. Every character, including his protagonist, is motivated by fear and a confused desire to make sense of their shambolic lives, latching on to whatever belief system or lifestyle might relieve them of the burden of living with ambiguity. The divide between Rhys and his daughter isn’t really about politics, and the group of anti-government Christians building a fortress in the mountains is much less prepared for actual violence than their military cosplay might imply. There is one genuine bad guy, but he’s not motivated by political or religious ideology so much as by simply wanting an excuse to hurt others.
Told at a gallop, with lots of wry humor, the end result is not so much a portrait of a country riven by insoluble differences as it is about a family split by secrets and betrayals, living in a country where people are hurting and adrift, bombarded by too much information and too few connections, unable to see one another through the drifting smoke of fires set by people who don’t care about the consequences. It’s both a generous exploration of messed-up people and a rollicking portrait of our times, with reductionist ideological dichotomies blurred around the edges and made more sad, more ridiculous, and more human.
Oh, and it’s a pretty good thriller, besides.