Narrator George Newbern skillfully portrays this father-son drama with a warm heart and confident intellect. An octogenarian Seattle lawyer named Royal accepts what will be his final criminal case. Since he no longer has a driver’s license, he needs his son, the story’s narrator, to drive him. Newbern balances the compassion and caring between the two characters as they investigate the death of an adopted girl from Ethiopia who dies in the care of her fundamentalist parents. Guterson uses this tragic case to examine modern American justice and injustice. Newbern’s empathy for the characters as they question social norms ties into Guterson’s narrative twists as they shine a light on the lawyer’s tragic final case. R.O. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
The Final Case: A novel
Narrated by George Newbern
David GutersonUnabridged — 7 hours, 27 minutes
The Final Case: A novel
Narrated by George Newbern
David GutersonUnabridged — 7 hours, 27 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
Related collections and offers
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Overview
"Ultimately, the mystery at the center of The Final Case is not about innocence or guilt, but about how one family's profound attachments can stand alongside breathtaking cruelty in another.” -Scott Turow, The New York Times Book Review
A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey-conservative, white fundamentalist Christians-are charged with her murder.
Royal, a Seattle criminal attorney in the last days of his long career, takes Betsy Harvey's case. An octogenarian without a driver's license, he leans on his son-the novel's narrator-as he prepares for trial.
So begins The Final Case, a bracing, astute, and deeply affecting examination of justice and injustice-and familial love. David Guterson's first courtroom drama since Snow Falling on Cedars, it is his most compelling and heartfelt novel to date.
Editorial Reviews
★ 10/25/2021
The death from hypothermia of an adopted Ethiopian girl, Abeba "Abigail" Addisu, while in the care of her Christian fundamentalist parents, Betsy and Delvin Harvey, drives this outstanding literary thriller from PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars). Betsy and Delvin, who live in rural Skagit Country north of Seattle, are arrested on homicide charges, and Betsy is put on trial for murder. On a break from fiction writing, the unnamed narrator accompanies his elderly criminal attorney father, Royal, who has agreed to defend Betsy, for the pretrial interview of Betsy. When Royal dies before the final verdict, his son picks up the loose ends of his father's life while continuing to follow the case, which exposes the cruel conditions in which Abeba suffered. The narration is the novel's main draw. Equal parts philosophical, humane, and self-deprecating, it powerfully speaks to the ineffable contradiction of living a meaningful life. Guterson sensitively explores religion, white privilege, and justice while examining with realism and empathy the bond between parents and their children. With its simple message of hope, this novel will linger with readers long after the final page. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (Jan.)
A unique, moving book . . . Nearly impossible to put down . . . It has an unexpected poignancy that builds as the pages turn . . . Though a story of hate is at its center, it’s enveloped by a larger story of fiction and wonder and love—most brightly that of a son for his father.”
—Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times
“Masterful . . . Sublime . . . Ultimately, The Final Case is a thorough investigation into what makes the two main characters tick while providing readers truth about the human condition in that satisfying way only great fiction can do.”
—Elena Hartwell, New York Journal of Books
“Elegiac and touched with Seattle Noir . . . The novelist’s celebrated eye for detail is evident on page after page . . . Like Faulkner and Shakespeare, Guterson puts grotesquely evil acts at the center of his narratives. Like John Gardner, the stories are told in non-experimental ways and with a firm moral core . . . As in an earlier review of Guterson’s novels, ‘Here’s the admirable thing. His books keep getting better.’”
—David Brewster, Post Alley
“In this courtroom drama, the author’s first since Snow Falling on Cedars, Guterson turns the genre on its head . . . As the novel unfolds, its legal framework reveals its true stake: understanding how such a tragedy could occur within the systems we take part in . . . Hope triumphs.”
—Avenue Magazine (Best Books of 2022 So Far)
"A tender, closely observed, and often surprising novel . . . Ultimately, the mystery at the center of The Final Case is not about innocence or guilt, but about how one family’s profound attachments can stand alongside breathtaking cruelty in another . . . Guterson is the kind of writer about whom people used to say, when there were such things, ‘I’d read him, even if he wrote the phone book.’ Every sentence has a graceful weight and meter and is illumined by a subtle intelligence that makes his descriptions arresting but never showy . . . Vivid and wrenching.”
—Scott Turow, New York Times Book Review
“A beautiful, heartfelt novel. Guterson’s tale swirls and loops and soars and digresses, gradually pulling you, like a vortex, closer and closer to eternal truths about death and life, hate and love. Especially love.”
—Daniel James Brown, author of #1 New York Times Best Seller The Boys in the Boat
“With empathy as deep as Puget Sound and his usual graceful prose, Guterson does a masterful job of showing a father facing his last big challenge in life and the son whose love of him is much more than filial duty. The Final Case is alive with all the contradictions of our moment, but more than that, it’s alive with wisdom that this novelist has earned.”
—Timothy Egan, author of National Book Award winner The Worst Hard Time
“David Guterson’s appropriately nameless main character in The Final Case is a fiction writer at the vortex of a life he can no longer see as linear, heroic, or containable by his old architectures. In this ‘final case,’ all of history is on trial, and his character finds himself a witness in the still and silent eye of disturbances now cyclonic in force and scope. Guterson is at his best here when capturing the wildly various judgments of our moment. His ranters run the gamut, from fundamentalist conspiracy theorists to socialist decolonialists; he captures with equal accuracy the painful double-bind of being a young white liberal male, and the pathos of mortal decline. At the heart of the story lies the moral complexity of what constitutes salvation. Guterson’s characters, powerless to deter, correct, or forgive one another, can only denounce and punish. But his witness, the writer, makes no easy sense of the crimes he encounters, and is capable of only the most tenuous conclusions. Nothing could be more humane, or timely.
—Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country
“I read The Final Case in a single sitting, spellbound by David Guterson’s exploration of a tragic death caused by the kind of religious fanaticism that has long plagued our human species. Yet he balances this horrifying perversion of spirituality with the portrait of a lawyer, nearing death, who in the true meaning of heroism, knows that his daily devotion to the rule of law, reason, and civilized values is all that we have—as problematic as these principles can be—to hold back the irrational, ever-present darkness in the human soul. Long after you have finished reading this life-affirming novel, the timeless issues it raises will linger in your mind.”
—Charles Johnson, author of National Book Award winner Middle Passage
“[An] outstanding literary thriller . . . Equal parts philosophical, humane, and self-deprecating, it powerfully speaks to the ineffable contradiction of living a meaningful life. Guterson sensitively explores religion, white privilege, and justice while examining with realism and empathy the bond between parents and their children. With its simple message of hope, this novel will linger with readers long after the final page.”
—Publishers Weekly
"A bestselling author explores art, justice, and grief as he questions what makes a story true . . . [Guterson] subverts expectations over and over again . . . Needfully discomfiting."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
08/01/2021
In this latest from the author who launched his career with the popular Snow Falling on Cedars, an Ethiopian girl adopted by a white fundamentalist Christian family is found dead of hypothermia in her Seattle backyard and her adoptive mother put on trial for murder. She is defended by an octogenarian criminal attorney whose son narrates the story as he chauffeurs his father around town. How did it feel for Abeba to find herself in an environment so far from—and so different from—her homeland? Why did the lawyer take what will be his final case? And what does the town think of these events?
Narrator George Newbern skillfully portrays this father-son drama with a warm heart and confident intellect. An octogenarian Seattle lawyer named Royal accepts what will be his final criminal case. Since he no longer has a driver’s license, he needs his son, the story’s narrator, to drive him. Newbern balances the compassion and caring between the two characters as they investigate the death of an adopted girl from Ethiopia who dies in the care of her fundamentalist parents. Guterson uses this tragic case to examine modern American justice and injustice. Newbern’s empathy for the characters as they question social norms ties into Guterson’s narrative twists as they shine a light on the lawyer’s tragic final case. R.O. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
★ 2021-10-13
A bestselling author explores art, justice, and grief as he questions what makes a story true.
“Awhile back, I stopped writing fiction.” This is one of the first things the narrator has to say about himself. After a description of the (implausibly brief) existential crisis that followed the end of his fiction-writing career, he addresses the reader directly: “If that leaves you wondering about this book—wondering if I’m kidding, or playing a game, or if I’ve wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of autofiction—everything here is real.” This may look like reassurance, but it’s actually a warning. Using a young girl’s murder as an inciting incident, Guterson tests the reader’s understanding of story, truth, and how the two intersect. The narrator’s father, Royal, is an attorney approaching the end of his own career. When Royal agrees to defend a White woman accused of killing her Black adopted daughter, the narrator becomes intrigued by the case. Again and again, his father cautions him that the real justice system doesn’t function the way it does on TV, but then a judge delivers a speech that provides exactly the kind of moral satisfaction we want from crime shows. This speech serves as a bookend to an earlier passage in which the accused woman’s mother rants about all the ways in which White Christians are oppressed in contemporary America. The shape of this text—a single, uninterrupted paragraph spread over multiple pages—strains credulity, but its content is instantly recognizable to anyone who pays even scant attention to right-wing media. Guterson seems to be asking why righteously elegant oration seems realistic when it’s coming from the bench but an equally impassioned soliloquy delivered in the living room of a double-wide in rural Washington feels like a literary contrivance. The author subverts expectations over and over again. After the narrative begins to take the shape of a courtroom drama, the story shifts back to the personal concerns of the narrator—including a lot of thought and conversation about the craft of writing—for so long that it seems possible that the dead child has been forgotten. She has not. It’s just that real life seldom has an obvious beginning, middle, and end. The book closes with the narrator turning toward his wife in the dark while she whispers, “We can love people….What else is there?” This might feel like an easy out for a story in which hateful people and dumb mortality wield their power. Or it can feel like a gentle acknowledgement of our collective precarity.
Needfully discomfiting.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940176225594 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/11/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Pretrial
A while back, I stopped writing fiction. I’ve been doing it for a long time, I’m not interested anymore, there are other things in life, I’d be repeating myself—I became aware that thoughts like these, uninvited, unexpected, persistent, and gnawing, were proliferating in my head, and outweighed any urge to write fiction, at first by a little, so that I stayed in the habit, but then by a lot, so that I quit.
It was a strange development for me. My situation was unfamiliar. Perplexed at first, I puttered and tinkered. I read books long unread. I took walks that might aptly be described as putting one foot in front of the other while trying not to forget that it was time to change a furnace filter. I swam laps with my wife every Tuesday and Thursday morning in a public pool. About once a week, we went to see a movie; about twice a week, we ate lunch in a café. My life clearly smacked now of bourgeois retirement. Predominantly, I cleaned, organized, repaired, and refurbished, and so the weeks went past without any fiction writing. Some days, I was distressed to learn that it was noon already, but this perturbation, from the start, was mild, a pang at worst, or an ephemeral hollowness. More persistent was a vague intimation that, at the heart of every moment of living, something was wrong. That faded, until I was waking up each morning without giving fiction writing any thought or missing it. Fiction writing was behind me in full. There were other possibilities now. If that leaves you wondering about this book—wondering if I’m kidding, or playing a game, or if I’ve wandered into the margins of metafiction or the approximate terrain of autofiction—everything here is real.
One October Sunday afternoon, after I’d headed four rows of raspberry canes that still had leaves but were shedding them as I culled, my father called me. Two things, he said. First, a tree had fallen in his yard. Second, he’d had a minor car accident. The downed tree, while a nuisance, could wait indefinitely. The accident, though, was a problem, because his car was undrivable and he had to be at work in the morning.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t get hurt. No one got hurt. That’s on the bright side. On the downside, I’m at fault. I know that. I can’t blame someone else. I plowed into a parked car. I turned a corner and plowed into a car, and I sat there thinking, ‘I know what this means. It’s the beginning of the end for me.’
“Your mother,” my father went on, “had a series of parking-lot scrapes, and then a serious fender bender, and the result is, for about two years now, she hasn’t gotten behind the wheel of a car, which you know, of course, and anyway we only had the one car, and now it’s unusable. We’re okay, though, in broad terms.”
My parents were okay—in broad terms. They still lived in the house where they’d raised me and my sister—a brick saltbox with brick windowsills and a wrought-iron railing on one side of the fissured concrete risers outside their front door. It was full of failed windows with permanently obscured panes, and hemmed in by bushes irregularly trimmed. It had a half-basement crammed with objects put aside for a future dispersal that never came, and a roof that leaked where it met a chimney penetration. The rooms were low-ceilinged, the interior doorways trimmed by scant casing. Light fell across everything in a desultory fashion—across the ceramic figurines on the side tables, across the heaped-up matchbox collection, and across the sideboard with its display of blue-and-white Delft crockery. My parents, in their eighties, had gravitated toward their combination kitchen/dining room as the stage on which their lives would play out. They’d installed a half-sofa and a small television there, cramping the room with this modest arrangement. It was a bit of a feat to slip around the table where they took their meals and into the nest they’d made for themselves beneath a window—a window against which, at the moment, as my father explained, the whip ends of branches were curled in the aftermath of tree fall.
I went to their house. It wasn’t hard for me to do so. I lived about fifteen minutes away by car, which you could say sounds depressing—staying in the approximate neighborhood of your youth for your whole life. I wasn’t down about it, though. In fact, I liked it. Plus, I would have moved if there’d been a reason for it, like a job, for example, or because my wife wanted to. My sister had also stayed put. She’d stayed in Seattle, and had said about that, more than once, “Why move?”
The toppled tree in my parents’ backyard was a spruce that had succumbed to a recent windstorm. About a third of it had cracked off and now lay with its branches either spearing the earth or rising like bristles. Bark, needles, and cones littered the patio, and an acrid scent of resin hung in the air. I went to work with a chain saw until a reasonable neatness had been reintroduced, and then my father and I ducked into the cedar-shingled shed at the rear corner of my parents’ lot—ramshackle and dilapidated, with a duff-filled, detached gutter—to look at his car, which was emphatically crumpled on the driver’s side at the front, where a headlight dangled sadly. “What happened,” he said, “is that by the time I got home—and this accident occurred just two blocks away—all of the water had come out of the radiator. So now it has to sit here until I figure something out.”
Videos
