Book of the Week September 10, 2026
It’s January 3, 1986. Two and a half hours west of Minnesota’s Twin Cities sits the “back-of-beyond hamlet” of Monte (short for Montevideo), with “a population of five thousand snowbound souls.” Heading its tiny police department is recently widowed 59-year-old Gordon Trent, who is determined not to retire. On this same frigid winter day, as the police chief goes about his daily routines, 26-year-old Byron Lugo is released from Stillwater prison after serving almost four years for vehicular homicide. At the time of his trial, Byron refused to acknowledge his guilt. Now free, he aims to clear his name and get his old life back despite resistance from a hostile community wary of the felon in their midst. It’s Byron’s unrelenting insistence on his innocence that awakens uncertainty and doubt in Trent as he begins to reexamine the case. Morales’s beautifully written debut is both a slow-burn of a literary mystery, gradually revealing a tragic secret, and an evocative portrait of Midwestern small-town life with a vivid sense of place and well-developed characters.—Willy Williams
