A historical novel about a romantic courtship during the turbulent late 1960s.

Epps opens his story by introducing the couple at the heart of it as they appear in a photo taken in 1972: a man named Henry Good (“eager, masculine, prideful”) and a woman named Gladys Welson (“elegant, in wide-legged pants, a fitted shirt and cardigan”). They’re both baby boomers: “Their parents before them had been regulated by regional politics, class, education, and ethnicity, forced to put country and family before self. But not these.…They could be only for themselves.” The narrative soon shifts to the year 1968, when Gladys Welson is a senior attending Williamson College in Virginia. She’s a studious, introspective person, absorbed in her studies and the various philanthropic activities of her sorority. However, she’s leery of going on dates as her friends do: “I’m not looking for a man,” she thinks, defiantly. “I’m going to be independent and progressive.” As a result, she’s skeptical when her friend Martha Wainwright invites her to meet her boyfriend’s buddy, a young man named Henry Good, who’s an athlete at nearbyJames County College. She finds Henry to be goofy and approachable (although the narration somewhat confusingly describes him as “too well mitigated by fear and honor to be defiant”), but their first meeting doesn’t seem to guarantee a future for them together. The novel goes on to follow their relationship as Gladys and Henry each go through a series of setbacks and achieve insights

The author does an effective job of evoking the various concerns and attitudes of the late ’60s. Henry and Gladys experience the shock of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and they go about their days and attend classes as the Vietnam War rages overseas; one of Henry’s friends shipped out and was killed, and he feels that he should enlist in order to honor his friend’s memory. Epps also skillfully develops his main characters, following Henry as his feelings for Gladys grow increasingly complex and tracing Gladys’ father’s descent into alcoholism. Throughout, the story moves forward at a smooth pace. However, it’s occasionally muddied by purple prose: “She wandered flagrantly among the birthing influence of daydreams, thoughts born of a cataract churning outward at its base and into the pool of spirit.” (At another point, the narration notes that “Days fell through and behind thoughts, their essences dispersed in revolutions around the sun.”) Such discordant flourishes can be distracting, but the main currents of the story will keep readers engaged. Henry’s experiences in the armed services are compelling, as his idea of duty conflicts with his natural state of insecurity; here, he assesses himself as an officer: “not a real one. A trained one. An untested one. A nervous one.” Equally striking are the author’s evocations of war: “The Americans were outdone by a jungle, bewildered by its twists and turns, where death with a hoary growl would snatch and snag and swipe, ripping men out of time.”

An unevenly executed but quietly confident love story.

In this debut novel, a man becomes obsessed with tracking the online identity of a person who may be behind a string of shootings.

When 50-something Jack Warner hears of a tragic shooting at a local Missouri high school, he’s angry. Though the transportation logistics analyst has no kids, the violent event triggers his outrage over such things as corrupt businesses and “soulless” news broadcasts. But he’s even more distraught by what he sees on his 23-year-old nephew Luke’s computer screen. Luke is using EasyChat, the same online group the high school shooters utilized, and it seems the individuals in a particular chat room are championing the boys’ lethal actions. Jack asks his nephew for the chat room’s password and zeroes in on the moderator, who goes by the handle Fonzie. Jack tracks Fonzie on other sites, like Instagram, and is gradually fascinated by the grisly, deviant content of these online discussions. Then there’s a series of shootings, including at a nearby mall, and Jack believes he may already have his eyes on the person responsible. His obsession grows, as he gains illicit access to police records so he can follow the official investigation and purchases a weapon of his own—not a handgun, but a sniper rifle. Jack is on morally shaky ground since he’s not quite sure how connected Luke is to the group. But he may be in physical danger as well, as it’s easy for any of the chat-room regulars, especially the shooter, to pinpoint his IP and home addresses. Epps’ grim novel is an incisive look at people’s responses to violent tragedies. Jack, for one, toys with the notion of vigilantism, which fortunately the story never glorifies. In fact, in an early scene, Jack’s encounter with “thuggish-looking fellas” outside a convenience store fails to take the perilous turn he apparently anticipates. While Jack’s behavior borders on paranoia over gun-toting teens, it’s clear he’s also attempting to understand those disturbed enough to resort to mass murder. That’s why he initially frequents the chat room and makes efforts to reach Luke, whose angst is palpable. At the same time, the author deftly contrasts Jack with Kathy Cray, a teacher he worked with when he was in the same profession. Back then, her method of handling a troubled male student was to treat him as a problem to be discarded rather than getting the boy help. Epps smartly incorporates social media into the plot and criticizes the users more than the sites themselves. For example, Jack’s online presence ultimately strains his relationship with his girlfriend, Penny Grierson, which he rightly blames on his obsession. His chronic despondency carries over to the arresting but bleak prose. In one instance, he stands on his porch listening to “the sounds of the night” before imagining “people out there in the darker shadows, some dragging their feet like the walking dead, some scanning like predators, some cowering like victims.” Though most readers will predict a plot turn in the final act, two other twists are genuinely shocking and only further the narrative’s somberness.

A profound, harrowing examination of violence in the 21st century.