Deep Winter

At the start of Gailey’s relentlessly tragic debut, Danny Bedford—fat, mentally slow, and considered harmless by most folks in the small town of Wyalusing, Pa.—discovers Mindy Knolls’s battered body in her trailer on her birthday in 1984. Alternating points-of-view include those of aging and weary Sheriff Lester; befuddled, good-hearted Danny; swaggering deputy sheriff Mike Sokowski, who’s also the town drunk; alcoholic state trooper Bill Taggart; and Mindy’s revenge-minded twin brothers, Scott and Skeeter Knolls. In this isolated, winter-frozen community, where “everybody around here always carries a firearm,” a dispirited and confused Danny, suspected of Mindy’s murder, wanders the woods while some hunt to capture and others to kill him. Some townspeople doubt his guilt, but few are willing to stand up for him. The multiplicity of voices isn’t always successful, but Gailey molds them to form a moving picture of a man, often referred to as “retard,” who becomes a moral compass. Agent: Natasha Alexis, Zachary Schuster Harmsworth. (Feb.)