Description

A luminous novel from the New York Times bestselling author of City on Fire, plunging us deep into the lives of a teenage girl and her father as they navigate love, grief, addiction, redemption and connection.

When 13-year-old Jolie Aspern drops her phone onto the subway tracks in 2011, her estranged dad, Ethan, seems like the furthest thing from her mind. A convicted felon and recovering addict, Ethan has always struggled to see past himself. But then a call from his ex makes him fear their daughter’s in deeper trouble than anyone realises. Believing he’s the only one who can save her, he decides to return to New York with a gift: the whole of his life, its hard-won triumphs and harrowing mistakes…

So begins the intimate epic of Jolie and Ethan: child and adult, apart and together, different yet the same. Their journey toward each other will face opposition from grandparents and siblings and friends. It will strain connections with roommates and benefactors and a probation officer desperate to help. It will push Jolie out past her depth with a mysterious admirer, and Ethan in over his head with his first love, Jolie’s mom. But as father and daughter struggle to find their footing, new vistas beckon: from a surf break in mid-’90s Delaware to group therapy during the Great Recession, from an encampment at Occupy Wall Street to a HoJo on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, from the heights of the Brooklyn Bridge to horizons seldom seen in fiction.

The Second Coming is at once an incandescent feat of storytelling and an exploration of an enduring mystery: can we ever really outrun the past, stay true to ourselves while still chasing something new? Full of music and pathos and passion, this beautifully attuned work of fiction makes good Garth Risk Hallberg’s extraordinary promise.

Publisher Review

Reading Garth Risk Hallberg is a constant delightful surprise – you never know what’s coming next… The Second Coming is a beautiful and daring novel, as inventive as it is breathtaking — Nathan Hill Garth Risk Hallberg’s The Second Coming is a sprawling, aching, ultimately hopeful account of a father’s love for a daughter and a daughter’s defiance of that love when all too often it manifests as dysfunction. Hallberg deals with the dilemma of parental inheritance with a light touch, and the grace that finally descends on the Aspern clan is not only transformative but triumphant — Joshua Ferris A powerful statement about the clarifying purpose in parental love… A fascinating – and convincing – portrait of a daughter in crisis and a father in need of redemption — Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves Garth Risk Hallberg’s great gift is his ability to translate epic themes into intensely intimate, cumulatively powerful novels. Full of tension and emotion and populated by vivid characters and ideas, The Second Coming builds word by word to capture the intricacies of life while revealing its own breathtaking scope — Christina Baker Kline, author of #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train