The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

Some stories grab you by the collar the moment you open the cover. This is one of them.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a spellbinding novel about how one small moment can shatter an entire life.

It’s the first Thursday in August, 1978. The temperature is flirting with ninety. Eighteen-year-old Mira Winston, a golf prodigy, drives a practice ball from her tee. It tears through the net and, with sickening force, strikes a high school junior named Kenny Foster. He is dead before the ambulance arrives.

Everyone agrees it was an accident. At first.

In the wake of tragedy, Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places. In her lover, a married man forty years her senior. In her mother, a woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy’s grieving little sisters. But when the golf pro looks closer at that torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, this affluent, mannered community turns on a once-promising young woman.

From the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent glare of a district courtroom, this is a gripping tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial. It asks a haunting question: what happens when a swing, a ball, a single piece of string changes everything?

A perfect companion for a rainy afternoon in the cove, when the fog rolls in and you want nothing more than to linger in a story you can’t put down.

Come find it on our shelves. We think you’ll want to talk about it afterward.

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