Broadway Books is pleased to welcome Lynn Stegner with her new novel The Half-Life of Guilt. She will be joined in conversation with Keith Scribner, a novelist and Professor at OSU.
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 an international 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. Author Rick Bass writes “Lynn Stegner is a beautiful writer. This fiercely wrought family saga will take your breath away with its sharpness and depth.”
Lynn Stegner’s books include the novels Undertow, Fata Morgana, and Because a Fire Was in My Head, which won the Faulkner Award for Best Novel and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her novella triptych, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, was awarded a Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal. She divides her time between San Francisco and northern Vermont.
Keith Scribner is the author of four novels, Old Newgate Road, The Oregon Experiment, Miracle Girl,and The GoodLife, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He lives in Corvallis and teaches in OSU’s MFA Program.