Notes on an Execution by thriller writer Danya Kukafka (Girl in Snow) finds Ansel Packer on death row in a Texas prison, scheduled to die in 12 hours. While Ansel plots his escape with the help of a prison guard he believes he's charmed, the novel unfolds the story of Ansel's life through the eyes of the women who've loved, hated and hunted him. There's Lavender, his loving but imperfect mother; Hazel, his wife's twin sister, who can't look away even as she yearns to build her own life; and Saffy, his childhood foster sibling-turned-detective who knows something isn't right. As Ansel's final hour draws closer, these three women work to piece together the fragments of their own stories and the stories of the girls he killed.
Clever in its construction and heartrending in its insights, Notes on an Execution is a raw yet sensitive look at the kind of loss, violence and monstrosity that it is all too easy to oversimplify. While Ansel's present-day, second-person narration is what stitches these stories together, it is ultimately the entangled chorus of women who define the novel. The slow-burn tension of these multiple perspectives captures the resilience required in the face of inevitability, the determination to hope despite the lingering presence of rage and volatile hatred. Saffy's point of view, in particular, while being the most traditionally heroic, helps readers to see that there are no easy heroes or villains, even when one is wanted most. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor