Final Things

With the publication of Clara Callan and its sweep of the awards and bestseller lists, Richard B. Wright has become a household name. But as many fiction lovers are just now discovering, Wright has been dazzling critics, writers, and his loyal audience for years, with stories that grab hold and don’t let go. Final Things is one such book, a story as shockingly timely now as it was when it was first published in 1980.

Jonathan Farris, 12, leaves his father’s apartment one Saturday afternoon and never returns. The next day police discover that Jonathan was brutally raped and murdered, his trip to the convenience store cut short by an unknown killer. Charlie, Jonathan’s father, already on a down-ward slide from a nasty divorce, a stalled writing career, and a creeping alcohol addiction, struggles to cope with the most devastating loss a parent can ever endure. When an anonymous phone call offers him information about his son’s killer, Charlie is galvanized into action, channeling his grief, his guilt, and his rage into one of the most powerful confrontations since James Dickey’s Deliverance.