Our Burden's Light

Casey's debut novel reads like a novella winding through short stories linked not so much by characters and narrative, but by themes of grief. In the overarching story, Shenandoah Valley developer Robert Shelley tries to hold his family together after his teenage son, Grant, is found murdered in the woods. While the teenage killer, Hayden Clyde, and Evelyn Warren, Grant's ex-girlfriend turned Hayden's new girlfriend, grapple with the magnitude of their actions, Robert sinks his teeth deeper into the knowledge that neither he nor his son is an innocent victim. Though the short story–like chapters about people losing one another often feel out of joint with the central narrative, readers who enjoy that specifically Southern breed of dark, lush literature will savor this book's sinuous sentences and their tendency to switch back, hone in, and trace the border regions of life and death. (Apr.)