The Winter in Anna

Karaim’s (If Men Were Angels) haunting second novel opens with Anna’s suicide, an event Eric Valery finds himself returning to as an older man and a new father. He recounts dropping out of college at the age of 20 and moving to Shannon, N.Dak., to work at the Shannon Sentinel, where he meets Anna. The two of them, both editors, spend time alone laying out the newspaper in the pre-Internet days, and Anna begins to share with Eric fragments of her dark past: growing up without money in the badlands, her young marriage going sour, the mysterious scars on her wrists. Readers follow the pair on their small-town reporting adventures—to the dikes during bad floods, to the high school’s graduation ceremony, to a sailboat race on the lake—through Eric’s yearlong stint in Shannon, watching their friendship deepen and grow stronger, when suddenly, with winter, something changes in Anna. Though the prose occasionally falters, Anna’s story and the mystery of her death are captivating, and Eric’s meditations on the grieving process are wonderfully crafted. Eric’s journalistic attempt to piece together Anna’s story make this a beautiful, touching novel. (Jan.)