The genius of Jess Walter's writing is both mercury and steel: never predictable, always reliable. Like all of Walter's work, So Far Gone combines strong pacing and quick wit as it looks squarely at its subject, a man fighting to save his family after years of self-imposed isolation. Rhys Kinnick is jolted out of his reclusive life on land outside Spokane, Wash., when a stranger deposits his grandchildren on his porch, although he fails at first to recognize them. Though it had been rocky for years, his relationship with his daughter, Bethany, and her family broke at Thanksgiving in 2016, when Bethany's husband, Shane (who "traded his mild drug habit for a Jesus-and-AM radio addiction"), pushed his conspiracy talk too far and Rhys punched him. But Rhys's decision to disappear is bigger, deeper than just a family rift. As he explains it, "At some point, you look around, and think, I don't belong here anymore. I don't want to have anything to do with any of this." But when Bethany disappears and armed members of Shane's church forcibly remove his grandchildren from him, Rhys can no longer ignore the broken world from a safe distance.
Walter (Beautiful Ruins; The Cold Millions; The Angel of Rome) is known for his humor, and So Far Gone does have moments that may elicit a chuckle, but the tone overall is darker, covered with an all-too-familiar feeling of bitter helplessness. When Chuck, the retired cop helping Kinnick, describes "those Army of the Lord douchebags... in their Don't-Tread-on-Me-I-got-a-small-dick pickup trucks and their Kevlar vests over their black T-shirts, their semiautomatic rifles BabyBjörned to their fat guts like the shithead soldier/cop-wannabes they were," it's both funny and sad and devastating for how accurate it all is. Despite the strong opinions that divide these men, the novel refuses a tidy us-against-them narrative. When Chuck first shows him how to handle a gun, Rhys is surprised by his response: "The shiver that went through his arm! The power! Just holding it, Kinnick felt a rush that he didn't entirely trust... but that he rather liked." There are villainous actors here, men full of cruelties, but there are also complicated, broken men like Shane, who are innocence and guilt all in one. So Far Gone poses enduring questions like how to reconcile our hope for the world and our fear of the worst that may yet come. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian
Shelf Talker: So Far Gone is a thriller, a family drama, and a think piece all in one, about a man forced to reckon with questions of faith and politics and what we will do to save the ones we love.