Distant Sons

By the New York Times bestselling author of Descent and The Current, an absorbing new work of literary suspense about two young working men who forge a friendship despite secrets in their past, and whose actions ignite the passions and violence of a small Wisconsin town still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of three boys in the 1970s. For readers of Peter Heller, Liz Moore, and Cormac McCarthy.

What if?
What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern in the Wisconsin town where he lands? Or Dan Young, another young man like Sean drifting through, having fled Minnesota for reasons unknown? Instead, together Sean and Dan pick up carpentry and plumbing work for an old man named Marion Devereaux, and Sean gets drawn into the lives of Denise and her father--and of the townspeople, all haunted by the disappearance of three young boys decades ago, in the 1970s.

As the paths of these characters converge, observing them all is Detective Corinne Viegas, a woman whose drive to seek justice comes from her father’s own failure to find those boys and the violence once done to her sister. And over the course of just a few weeks, an irreversible chain of events is set in motion that culminates in shattering violence, and the revelation of long-buried truths.

Evocative, gritty, with indelible characters and setting, Distant Sons is another immersive, gripping suspense novel by Johnston about how the most random intersection of lives can have consequences both devastating and beautiful.

Tim Johnston is the author of the novels Descent, The Current, the story collection Irish Girl, and the young adult novel Never So Green. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the recipient of the 2015 Iowa Author Award and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa.