Reviews

“The story is fully realized, with multi-dimensional characters and an increasingly complex tale. But why call The Half-Life of Guilt a tour de force? The excellence of this novel lies in Stegner’s masterful writing. … [I]t’s an engrossing story with vivid detail, fully dimensional characters, and the unmediated interiority of the protagonist’s mind. Stegner’s extraordinary crafting of language throughout makes for a truly outstanding novel.”

—R.P. Finch, PopMatters

“From the start, Lynn Stegner’s The Half-Life of Guilt delivers an ominous feeling. Soon enough, what it’s building to is revealed, and it is, in fact, awful, but the awful thing is not the point. In the months and years that follow, the twins Nina and Clair process those few minutes that changed everything. [W]hile weighty, the plot is never tedious. And Stegner’s simply stunning writing is full of sentences that sing off the page, and improbable yet perfectly apt descriptions: ‘The air ticks with heat, and the heat becomes time, and the time is everywhere and nowhere, a sudden menacing surfeit of the incomprehensible.’ This is a thoroughly literary novel, but the revelations keep raising the pulse of the story. Stegner knows the powerful bond between sisters, and The Half-Life of Guilt is a powerful story, beautifully told.”

—Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian, Shelf Awareness

“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

“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 gritty road trip between two of the most vivid gardens in American literature. They are radical opposites, the tender vines of Napa and the salty recesses of the gray whale rookery at Baja, united by one woman’s fierce moral compass. Clair’s journey is 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. Clair wakes to the vast primordial world; she sees every feature and knows the heartfelt calculations of each. Lynn 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

“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

“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 With Every Great Breath