In the ensuing months, Ethan tries to carry on while Grace shuts down almost completely, losing her business and her bearings. His father Ethan, an English professor at a small college nearby, bears guilt for not having insisted that Josh come away from the road his mother Grace is guilt-ridden as well, for having insisted they stop at the gas station so that Josh’s sister Emma could use the restroom and Dwight, running late after seeing a Red Sox game with his son and worried about the wrath of his ex at not having Sam back on time, not only has to bear the certainty of having killed someone Sam’s age, but also the fact that the sleeping boy received a black eye from the accident-to go along with the broken jaw that Dwight had given him accidentally on another occasion. Ten-year-old Josh Learner barely knew what hit him that summer night in northwestern Connecticut, on the way back from a symphony picnic with his family for the three adults-his parents and the driver of the speeding car-who saw what happened, it was as if their lives stopped then, too. The complex stages of guilt, grief, and recovery in the wake of a boy’s hit-and-run death are exquisitely portrayed in this heartrending story by Schwartz (Bicycle Days, 1989), whose characterizations are as finely nuanced as they are sympathetic.
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