Zee Trego is stressed: she's hobbling around waiting tables on a shattered hip, struggling to pay the bills for herself and her housebound hoarder mother, and caring for her young nephew, Marcus. Things get worse when Marcus's mother, LaReigne, is kidnapped by two inmates at the prison where she volunteers. Zee has no idea how to rescue her sister, but she's hellbent on trying. Bryn Greenwood (All the Ugly and Wonderful Things) weaves Zee's family story together with that of Gentry Frank, Zee's--stalker? acquaintance? not-quite-friend?--in the wry, vivid novel The Reckless Oath We Made.
A high-functioning autistic man who regularly hears (and talks to) multiple voices, Gentry is convinced he is destined to be Zee's champion. Zee isn't sure she can trust Gentry--or anyone. But her situation leaves her little choice. Together, they embark on a winding, perilous journey worthy of any knight and lady: from Gentry's actual castle in the Kansas woods to Zee's uncle's house at the very back of nowhere, before they set out on their rescue mission.
Greenwood renders her oddball cast of characters with insight and compassion: nearly every major member of the ensemble gets a chapter of his or her own, though Zee's dry, jaded, often snarky narrative voice carries the book. The story draws together themes of desperate poverty, the complicated bonds of family, mental illness and unlikely (but no less deep) love. Like Zee herself, Greenwood's fourth novel is sharp, unexpected and undeniably powerful. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams