The Half-Life of Guilt - by Lynn Stegner (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Lynn Stegner's acclaimed novels and story collections have drawn comparisons to the works of Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, and John Updike. Now in her new novel, The Half-Life of Guilt, Stegner tells the story of Clair Bugato and Mason Comstock. Together they journey to the world's largest saltworks in Baja California, where a proposed expansion threatens the California gray whale population, recently come back from the brink of extinction.

In the midst of a conservation battle, they meet a mysterious son of Mexico, Rubio Cantú, who leads them to the powers that be. Their two-week journey sends Clair deep into the past, where she reviews the divergent paths she and her near-identical twin sister have taken away from a childhood tragedy. At the same time, Mason confronts his own unhappy past in Cornwall, England, with a father whose hate was stronger than his love.

No other work of fiction patterns the warp and weft of human guilt, the homesickness only love can cure, environmental crises, the intrinsic conflict between international commerce and planetary health, and the necessity of forgiveness. The Half-Life of Guilt is woven from these themes, delivering to the reader an engrossing and transformative literary experience.

Review Quotes

"The Half Life of Guilt adroitly braids paired narratives: a risk-filled present journey down the coast of Mexico and the fraught past of a family in northern California. The twins at the center of the story--Nina and Clair--compel our close attention, and the novel somehow manages to be both action-packed and contemplative. Lynn Stegner gives us scientists and vintners and idealists and cynics: troubled creatures all. And she does so in prose as vivid as her scenery; the dead remain wholly alive."--Nicholas Delbanco, author of Why Writing Matters

A PopMatters Best Book of 2024

"The Half-Life of Guilt is a powerful tale of family loyalty, romantic love, and the long reach of a single, shocking childhood tragedy. Lynn Stegner has a profound understanding of how sisters relate--or fail to relate--and how the truth of the past can be lost to our misperceptions. This sobering and insightful story is beautifully told."--Elizabeth Crook, author of The Madstone and The Which Way Tree

"As Stegner explores both personal responsibility and our responsibility to care for the natural world, she illuminates the ways we love, fail to love, and repair our failures. Her unique sensibility makes for a fascinating read."--Andrea Barrett, author of Natural History and Ship Fever

"In this beautiful and layered novel Lynn Stegner takes us on a passionate tour of self-discovery and family history written so closely and with such astonishing sincerity that the entire novel becomes a kind of surprising tenderness. Stegner has the writer's gift of creating a dear victory from the uneasiness of pristine places. This is a rich, rich book."--Ron Carlson, author of Return to Oakpine

"Lynn Stegner is a beautiful writer. This fiercely wrought family saga will take your breath away with its sharpness and depth."--Rick Bass, author of For a Little While: New and Selected Stories