Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Narrated by Brian Hutchison, Amy McFadden
Lou BerneyUnabridged — 12 hours, 57 minutes
Narrated by Brian Hutchison, Amy McFadden
Lou BerneyUnabridged — 12 hours, 57 minutes
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD, THE MACAVITY AWARD, THE ANTHONY AWARD, AND THE BARRY AWARD*FOR BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
NOMINATED FOR THE 2015 LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE
With the compelling narrative tension and psychological complexity of the works of Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, Kate Atkinson, and Michael Connelly, Edgar Award-nominee Lou Berney's The Long and Faraway Gone is a smart, fiercely compassionate crime story that explores the mysteries of memory and the impact of violence on survivors-and the lengths they will go to find the painful truth of the events that scarred their lives.
In the summer of 1986, two tragedies rocked Oklahoma City. Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved.
Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors' lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt's latest inquiry takes him back to a past he's tried to escape-and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead.
Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past-with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she'll stop at nothing to find answers.
As Wyatt's case becomes more complicated and dangerous, and Julianna seeks answers from a ghost, their obsessive quests not only stir memories of youth and first love, but also begin to illuminate dark secrets of the past. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? Even if they find the truth, will it help them understand what happened, that long and faraway gone summer? Will it set them free-or ultimately destroy them?
The two key players [Wyatt and Julianna] in Lou Berney's superb regional mystery…suffer from separate but equally crushing cases of survivor guilt…Berney tells both their stories with supreme sensitivity, exploring "the landscape of memory" that keeps shifting beneath our feet, opening up the graves of all those ghosts we thought we'd buried.
★ 02/09/2015
Edgar Award–finalist Berney (Whiplash River) will raise a lump in the throats of many of his readers with this sorrowful account of two people's efforts to come to terms with devastating trauma. In 1986, Wyatt Rivers worked at an Oklahoma City movie theater that was hit by gun-wielding robbers who massacred the staff, but, for some reason, let Wyatt live. A month later, 12-year-old Julianna Rosales attended the Oklahoma State Fair, where her older sister, Genevieve, walked off into the night, never to return. In 2012, those tragedies still preoccupy Wyatt and Julianna. Wyatt, now a PI, gets a case that takes him back to Oklahoma City, where he can't help reliving the night of the massacre. Meanwhile, Julianna, now a nurse, is obsessed with pursuing any possible lead to her sister's fate, and gets new hope of a breakthrough when someone posts online an image from the last evening she saw Genevieve. The leads' struggles are portrayed with painful complexity, and Berney, fittingly, avoids easy answers. Agent: Richard Parks, Richard Parks Agency. (Feb.)
The two key players in Lou Berney’s superb regional mystery suffer from separate but equally crushing cases of survivor guilt . . . Berney tells both their stories with supreme sensitivity, exploring the ‘landscape of memory’ that keeps shifting beneath our feet.” — Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
“The Long and Faraway Gone is that rare literary gem — a dark, quintessentially cool noir novel that is both deeply poignant, and very funny . . . as hip, hilarious, and entertaining as it is wrenching, beautiful, and ultimately redemptive.” — Huffington Post
“Berney’s novel is most truly a thoughtful exploration of memory and what it means to be a survivor. Elegiac and wistful, it is a lyrical mystery . . . with a deep, wounded heart. Read it.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Focused, very insightfully, on love, loss, and memory . . . fully realized creations that readers won’t soon forget. A genuinely memorable novel of ideas.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Will raise a lump in the throat . . . the leads’ struggles are portrayed with painful complexity, and Berney, fittingly, avoids easy answers.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A tour de force built around two tragedies ripped from the headlines of this newspaper . . . should top the bestseller lists in our local bookstores, but is deserving of national acclaim.” — Oklahoma City Oklahoman
“This is crime fiction at its absolute best . . . deeply insightful and beautifully written . . . squarely in the ranks of powerhouses such as Lippman and Lehane.” — Crimespree Magazine
“So much to love here . . . easy to read yet difficult to forget. . . Berney is a mighty fine wordsmith whose name should be mentioned more often than it is during discussions of new bright lights in the literary world.” — Bookreporter.com
“Multi-faceted, layered, intense, alive—if you read only one crime novel this year, this should be the one.” — Sara J. Henry, Anthony Award-winning author of A Cold and Lonely Place
“With sharp wit and prose that brings the 80s to life in all its stone-washed glory, Lou Berney tells a complex story of characters struggling to make sense of life . . . Affecting, funny, and unfailingly honest, The Long and Faraway Gone is an extraordinary book.” — M.P. Cooley, author of Ice Shear
“Berney takes you places you’re not sure you want to go and brings you out again with a sure hand. It’s a satisfyingly complete deep-dive into a complicated history, with not only suspense but a compelling resolution.” — Carrie La Seur, author of The Home Place
Berney takes you places you’re not sure you want to go and brings you out again with a sure hand. It’s a satisfyingly complete deep-dive into a complicated history, with not only suspense but a compelling resolution.
With sharp wit and prose that brings the 80s to life in all its stone-washed glory, Lou Berney tells a complex story of characters struggling to make sense of life . . . Affecting, funny, and unfailingly honest, The Long and Faraway Gone is an extraordinary book.
Multi-faceted, layered, intense, alive—if you read only one crime novel this year, this should be the one.
So much to love here . . . easy to read yet difficult to forget. . . Berney is a mighty fine wordsmith whose name should be mentioned more often than it is during discussions of new bright lights in the literary world.
This is crime fiction at its absolute best . . . deeply insightful and beautifully written . . . squarely in the ranks of powerhouses such as Lippman and Lehane.
A tour de force built around two tragedies ripped from the headlines of this newspaper . . . should top the bestseller lists in our local bookstores, but is deserving of national acclaim.
Focused, very insightfully, on love, loss, and memory . . . fully realized creations that readers won’t soon forget. A genuinely memorable novel of ideas.
The Long and Faraway Gone is that rare literary gem — a dark, quintessentially cool noir novel that is both deeply poignant, and very funny . . . as hip, hilarious, and entertaining as it is wrenching, beautiful, and ultimately redemptive.
The two key players in Lou Berney’s superb regional mystery suffer from separate but equally crushing cases of survivor guilt . . . Berney tells both their stories with supreme sensitivity, exploring the ‘landscape of memory’ that keeps shifting beneath our feet.
Like Carl Hiaasen, Berney delights in the cartoonish. Like Elmore Leonard, he can drive a plot. What sets him apart is how well he evokes love, making the romance at the heart of this cinematic book as compelling as the mystery.” on GUTSHOT STRAIGHT
★ 2014-12-07
Twenty-five years after a devastating shooting and the unrelated disappearance of a teenage girl, the survivors of both events struggle to find out what really happened so they can move on with their separate lives. Edgar nominee Berney (Whiplash River, 2012) introduces two damaged but engaging characters: Wyatt, the sole survivor of a robbery/shooting at a movie theater that left six other people dead; and Julianna, whose beautiful and mercurial older sister, Genevieve, disappeared at the Oklahoma State Fair and has been presumed murdered ever since. The plot is driven by their searches for what happened in the past as well as a present-day mystery that brings Wyatt, now a private detective, home to Oklahoma City, the site of both earlier losses. Berney alternates his focus between their two stories, and while their paths do cross once or twice, there is no forced blending of the narratives. As in classic noir, the evocation of a specific place—Oklahoma City—and time's effects add another layer of meaning. Also as suggested by the noir-ish title and tradition, Berney's novel is most truly a thoughtful exploration of memory and what it means to be a survivor. Elegiac and wistful, it is a lyrical mystery that focuses more on character development than on reaching the "big reveal." The novel smartly avoids being coy; there are answers to private detective Wyatt's case and answers to the mysteries from the past, but they reflect the truth of such moments; in the end, the answers are almost beside the point because the wondering, the questions, never really go away. But both characters do achieve their own kind of closure, and that allows the reader to also feel some comfort of fulfillment. A mystery with a deep, wounded heart. Read it.
| BN ID: | 2940170154425 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 06/04/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
