Landed

Pears (In the Place of Fallen Leaves) opens his robust, resonant novel with a car accident on a Birmingham, England, roadway that claims the life of six-year-old Sara Ithell and costs her father, Owen, his right hand before backtracking to Owen's childhood in the early 1970s at the mercy of an absent father and a feeble mother. His best memories are of days spent on his grandparents' rugged Welsh farm, and he eventually finds happiness after he marries and starts a family with Mel. But after the accident, the happy family swoops into a downward spiral of dejection and painful psychological trauma as a despondent Mel absconds with the two surviving children to another man's home, and, after some obsessive deliberation, Owen kidnaps them from school and sets off on an epic journey of self-discovery and atonement that reveals Owen to be an oppressed and fascinating man forsaken by luck. This impressive, skillful novel portrays love and devotion in a unique, haunting way. (July)