Idaho

Emily Ruskovich's debut novel is about a family who is visited by an unspeakable act of violence. When I started reading it I found the story confusing - I'd mistakenly started reading the book about three quarters of the way through and didn't realize until I reached the end. I started again at the beginning and was immediately engaged. On a hot summer day a mother, father and their two little girls are collecting wood on an isolated mountain when, without warning, the mother kills the youngest child and the older girl disappears into the Idaho woods. It is told from numerous perspectives and the story goes back and forth over half a century but it is not disjointed. This is not a murder mystery; it is a story of family, the challenges of rural life and illness, pain, love, imagined and lost memory and, above all, human dignity, kindness and forgiveness. Idaho a very sad tale, beautifully told. Ruskovich won the 2019 International Dublin literary award for this book, a well-deserved honour.