Ann helps to care for Wade, who is suffering from genetic early-onset dementia, and she works to piece together his life with his ex-wife and two children before he is too sick to remember any of it. At the heart of the book is the relationship between Wade and Ann, who meet not long before the murder of Wade’s daughters and begin a romantic relationship shortly thereafter. The book spans over forty years, opening in 2004 and moving back and forth in time, from the mid-1980s, when Jenny and Wade were still together and a happy, young couple to the mid-2020s, when Jenny is released from jail. We learn early on that it was Jenny, Wade’s ex-wife and May and June’s mother, who committed the murder. From there, the story unfolds not as a thriller, but as a lyrical meditation on memory, loss, and recovery. The book opens on Ann, a middle-aged woman living in northern Idaho, rummaging through her husband Wade’s truck and thinking about Wade’s two young daughters - June, who has been missing for 18 years, and May, who is dead. When I began reading Emily Ruskovich’s debut novel Idaho, I thought it was going to be a plot-heavy mystery.
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