Ron Hansen's deeply affecting new novel opens in winter on the high
plains of Colorado, where rancher Atticus Cody receives an unexpected
visit from his wayward young son. An artist and wanderer, Scott has
recently settled into a life of heavy drinking and recklessness among
expatriates and Mexicans in the little town of Resurreccion on the
Caribbean coast. Weeks later, Atticus himself goes down to Mexico to
recover the body of his son, thinking he has committed suicide. Puzzled
by what he finds in Resurreccion, he begins to suspect that Scott has
been murdered.
"Atticus" is the story of a father's fierce love for his son, a love so
steadfast and powerful that it bends the impersonal forces of destiny to
its own will. As Atticus uncovers the story of his son's death, fitting
together the pieces of the mosaic that was Scott's life in Mexico— and
encountering a group of disturbing characters along the way— he suffers
a father's grief and rage, but is driven forward in his quest to
understand by the even more powerful force of a father's love.
Written in the sensuous prose style of Ron Hansen's earlier works of
fiction, "Atticus" is a suspenseful murder mystery, as vivid and precise
in its imagery as the highly acclaimed "Mariette in Ecstasy."
Illuminating those often obscure chambers of the human heart, "Atticus"
is finally a novel about deeply rooted, almost unfathomable love, a
mystery that Ron Hansen's fiction explores with a passion and intensity
no reader will be able to resist.
