The Life We Bury

It is rare a book gets under my skin like this, really makes me forget I'm reading "a book," and stays with me for so long. This is even more surprising considering that this is not only Eskens' first novel, but it clearly had subtle flaws throughout it that shouted "first novel" -- e.g., grammatical errors like "a couple minutes" instead of "a couple OF minutes," slightly stilted dialogue at first between Joe and Lila, and an initial portrait of Carl Iverson that predicted he'd be just another predictable Grizzled Tormented Vietnam Vet With A Heart of Gold. (He wasn't.) But I was pulled into the book steadily and surely -- and I ended up enjoying it immensely. I was deeply moved by the characters' journeys. I wanted the poignant story to continue, and I wanted to hang out more with the protagonist, Joe Talbert. When I read "The Life We Bury," I was on a trip to Europe, and usually when I'm traveling I discard books as I read them -- leave them in the hotel or give them to someone -- to save room in my suitcase. I couldn't bring myself to do that with "The Life We Bury" -- which was emblematic of the fact that I didn't want to let go of the characters, the story, the depth of feeling with which Eskens writes. I ended up mailing it home to myself in a box of souvenirs! Although Esken's next book, "The Guise of Another" doesn't seem to have gotten as many good reviews so far, I am definitely going to read it and his upcoming one, "The Heavens May Fall." No matter what, he clearly established himself to me as a novelist who puts his true heart into the story and characters. That's not something you find often in fiction, especially crime fiction. Well done, Mr. Eskens.

4 Stars. This is a great, fast read. It completely held my attention from cover to cover. SYNOPSIS Joe Talbert is not your average, happy go lucky, 21 year old college student. He has overcome many obstacles to become a student at the University of Minnesota; most of which are related to his mother and her combination of bi-polar disorder and alcohol abuse. He manages to work, make it to all his classes, live on a very tight budget and serve as back up caretaker for his autistic 18 year old brother. When Joe is assigned a paper in his biography class and has to find an older person to write about, he heads to a retirement home and is introduced to a Vietnam veteran who is also convinced murderer and rapists, Carl Iverson, he is hesitant to engage. He decides, at the very least, it will make an interesting biography project. But once he starts digging into the case, he realizes that things are not as they seem. Joined by his new friend/ love interest next door neighbor, he becomes fixated on finding out what really happened on the day in 1980 that Crystal Hagen was murdered and Carl's life changed forever. WHAT I LOVED This is not your average psychological thriller, it has many other elements as well: family struggles, escaping ones past, mental disorders, abuse and love. While the mystery unraveling is the main plot of the story, there were many other things going on in the characters lives. I liked Esken's writing style; he kept the plot going and didn't waste many words describing scenery, feelings, people etc., just enough so the reader gets the idea. I think I've been reading too many books lately where I have to skim page after page of overblown descriptions, it was refreshing to not have that in this book. I liked how none of the characters were perfect but they all had redeeming qualities. All of the characters had their own baggage / secrets, most of the characters (with the exception of a couple) used their past mistakes and struggles to become stronger and better. The plot was very very solid, well thought out and didn't have an excess of well placed 'coincidences' like many other books of this genre tend to have. I really couldn't find any plot holes. Again, loved to plot. It kept me completely engaged. WHAT I DIDN'T LOVE There was only scene in the book I didn't find believable (I'm not going to be specific because it would be a spoiler). Joe, who is normally pretty street smart, does something so blatantly dumb that it was hard to believe and was out of character for him. Ill leave it at that. When you read this book ( which you definitely should if you like this genre even a little), you'll know what I'm talking about. I was able to ignore it and still enjoy the story. OVERALL Don't miss this one. It's completely worth your time.

Gripping from start to finish! With each twist and turn this book had me invested and yearning to know more from page one and I had it finished it in a matter of days. Couldn’t have been more well written and I’m actually a little mind blown that it actually has negative reviews. It was PHENOMENAL, one of the best I’ve read! This was my first read from this author and it definitely won’t be my last. The story line of this incredible read would make one hell of a movie!! Looking forward to reading The Shadows We Hide 👏🏼

The Life We Bury – Allen Eskens I have discovered a new author that I hold in high esteem upon reading Allen Eskens’ The Life We Bury. I definitely hope to read more Eskens’ work before class dismisses. He is a joy to read, whom heavily engages his plot to serve up the reader a very well-thought, credible, wonderful story. Please put a very heavy emphasis on “wonderful story.” If the reader is looking for a bang-bang, shoot-them-up, high body count, in contention with the next Marvel Super-hero movie, The Life We Bury will not be their cup of energy drink. This guy has game to spare. The book is written with the thoroughness of a thesis paper and Eskens dots all of the I’s and crosses all of the T’s, and then he carefully thinks what could happen, what should happen, what would happen and then derives at the actual theme and what will happen. Wow, what a story, wow what a plot, and wow what a good book is The Life We Bury. Off the record, I should also mention that I had no idea at the wealth of great authors hailing from the Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa triangle of the United States. It must have something to do with the weather. This book received great reviews and was in the running for better than five hefty awards. The University of Minnesota, College student Joe Talbot is assigned a brief biography for an English class. Joe must write a brief biography on someone whom is a complete stranger to him. Procrastinating somewhat, Joe finally drums up the idea of going to a nursing home to see what kind of folks are currently in-residence there. So, Joe goes to a nearby nursing home to chat with some of the nurses and aides to see what he can come up with. Joe was not sure what to expect but after some talking back and forth Joe decides on a Vietnam Vet who served a sentence for murder and rape and is dying of cancer. Moreover, the person, Carl Iverson also agrees to this arrangement. Carl has two reasons – he wishes to clear his conscience, and he is innocent. Say what? However, Carl’s time remaining is measured, so Joe needs to get busy on this project. So, thus, with the above situation laid before the reader, Eskens spins out a luscious and wonderful tale. Joe’s neighbor, Lila, gets wind of the assignment and she anxiously wants to be on board with Joe. Joe and Lila team up as two of the most unlikely protagonists imaginable, but it folds together nicely. Unrelated background material of the past, and family, and work also are very interesting reading. Lila tells Joe how to lay claim to the court files of Carl Iverson’s case since they are Carl’s property. Joe acquires these files and he and Lila hungrily delve through these during Joe’s somewhat busy life. Armed with knowledge, Joe and Lila visit Minneapolis Cold Case detective, Max Rupert. He is intrigued but with a heavy backlog, he needs a bit more evidence and information to move this case to the top. He refers them to a Professor Sanden, and things start to happen. The case is re-opened. The interviews with Carl prove to be very worthwhile and interesting. Joe meets Virgil, an old army friend of Carl’s, and really the only living friend that Carl has, and even more leads and information surfaces. By now, Carl definitely appears to be innocent. The only questions are who did murder and rape 14-year old Crystal and will the case be solved before Carl passes? Of course, by this time, Rupert and the Minneapolis police want Joe and Lila to cease all involvement, but of course this falls on deaf ears. I was very impressed with The Life We Bury. Allen Eskens has written a fine book here. I believe that anyone who likes to read this type of a mystery will be delighted with the book, too. Eskens gets an easy 4-1/2 stars on this one, an unusually high rating from me. Thank you, Mr. Eskens.

3.5 stars. Nicely paced first outing from Mr. Eskens. The premise unwinds quite well as we learn about Joe, who, for an English assignment, decides to write a biography on someone close to their death. He lands on Carl Iverson a convicted rapist and murderer. Carl is out on parole at a nursing home waiting to die of cancer. As Joe interviews Carl, Joe becomes more and more convinced of Carl's innocence. Joe sets out to get Carl exonerated prior to Carl's impending death. Not a bad plot. Eskens' writing style is relaxed with no apparent overthought or agonizing over each written word which makes the writing flow easily. As each character is introduced there's some coloring in which helps to shape the character and help the reader understand their motivation. I particularly liked the autistic character, Jesse, who is Joe's brother. His helping with the investigation without him even knowing struck a chord with me. Joe's irresponsible mom was more a distraction but not too much. I never quite reconciled Joe's personality with his bouncer job and his ability to physically disarm people easily. I always had him more of a scholarly type buried in books and constantly pushing his glasses back up his nose while gulping down cereal for all meals. If anything we were shown too many sides of Joe via his mom, mom's "friends", brother, employment and girlfriend. His character ended up a little too washed out and became more of the Lifetime Movie hero. Lila, the initially reluctant girlfriend, was somewhat predictable with a past of her own. Staunch anti-Iverson at first, Joe won her over to his side and Lila became pro-Iverson and involved with the investigation. The bad guy in the whole thing was a little tepid. One thing that struck me was how easily Joe convinced total strangers, including crusty old detectives, to trust him and gain their help. It all came off a little tongue in cheek. OK, so, despite all my griping, I really enjoyed the book. I zipped through it in a day or two and never begrudged the time spent reading it. Summary. Great first outing from Allen Eskens. Intriguing plot, Nicely done characters in a mid-western setting. If anything, a little too "Lifetimey" but Mr. Eskens has the talent to rectify that as he becomes more seasoned. I understand he has a new book coming out in Fall of 2015. I will be picking that up anticipating great things.

I stumbled upon this book as a happy accident. I was perusing books on Amazon and in the “Based on Your Purchase History” section I saw it, read the description, and decided to buy it. I am so glad I did. What drew me to it was fact that the main character had an Autistic brother and I have an Autistic sister, so I was curious to see how the author would handle their relationship. He did an extremely good job of conveying the fear, protectiveness, and fierce love someone with an Autistic brother or sister feels toward their sibling. I also loved that he captured the weight of responsibility someone has when caring for a family member who is disabled, and the guilt that they have for feeling burdened by them at times. The main character, Joe Talbert, is a college student who is desperate to make a better life for himself than the one he grew up in. He has a very tumultuous relationship with his alcoholic mother, feels the weight of responsibility for his eighteen year old Autistic brother Jeremy, and his father has been absent his whole life. From a young age he had to be a parent to not only his brother, but also his mother, who would be gone for days at a time and the responsibility fell on Joe to find her and drag her back home from whatever bar she was holed up in. Always busy with class and working the door at a local bar, he finds himself increasingly close to his deadline for an assignment for which he has to find someone older and write a brief biography. Without anyone in his life to interview, he decides to head to a local nursing home, Hillview Manor, and ask if he can interview one of the residents there. Based on the notion that the residents there have led long lives, he thinks surely they would have lots of stories they would be willing to share with him. At first, the receptionist he speaks with is reluctant to let Joe meet with any of their residents, reasoning that the majority have dementia or severe memory loss and wouldn’t be able to share what little memories they have left. Joe persists and asks to speak with the director of the home, and it is then that the receptionist suggests that he could speak with a resident by the name of Carl Iverson. The director quickly dismisses the idea, telling Joe that Carl is a convicted rapist and murderer who has served thirty years in prison and has only recently been paroled due to the fact that he is dying of cancer and only has months to live. However, since Carl is simply a resident and not a prisoner she cannot deny him visitors. After hearing this, Joe is reluctant to pursue this any further, but due to his deadline he asks the director to speak with Carl and convey his request for the interview and call him when she has an answer, to which she agrees. Upon leaving Hillview Manor, Joe is called back home when things start to spiral out of control with his mother as they have many times before. His mother is arrested for a DUI, and again Joe is responsible for the care of his brother, which will seriously inhibit his ability to attend classes and work. Joe brings Jeremy back to his apartment and sets him up with his favorite movie of the moment and tries to get back to work on his assignment. Later, Joe comes home to find his attractive female neighbor, Lila, watching Jeremy’s favorite movie with him and connecting with him in a way few people are able to do. Joe invites Lila to come back for dinner, and to his delight she agrees, but she makes it clear she is only doing so because she enjoys Jeremy’s company. After being granted his request of the interview with Carl, Joe starts to research the rape and murder of Carl’s victim Crystal Marie Hagen on October 29, 1980. He finds out that Crystal was murdered and then set on fire in the shed on Carl’s property, which was next door to where she and her mother, step-father and step-brother had lived. He is able to obtain the transcript of the murder trial and sees the photos of the evidence presented by the prosecution, all of which seem to make it clear that Carl was indeed guilty of the heinous crime. Joe goes back to Hillview Manor to begin his interview with Carl. Expecting to see a hardened criminal, he is taken aback when he sees a withered man who is quickly succumbing to his disease. He begins to talk to Carl, who is weary of Joe’s intentions, but agrees to tell him his story as long as Joe agrees to be truthful, telling him that he wants someone to know what really happened before he dies. Joe learns that Carl is not just the villain he appears to be, but he was also a decorated Vietnam war veteran and his only ally in life is his best friend Virgil, who served alongside him in the war. After his first meeting with Carl, Joe is pulled back to his hometown to attend his mother’s hearing for her DUI where she is given the decision to either pay three thousand dollars to be released or can pay nothing but be hooked to an alcohol monitoring bracelet. Joe’s mother refuses the bracelet because she is adamantly unwilling to abstain from alcohol and cruelly tries to guilt Joe into paying the money, which will leave him unable to pay for school the next semester. However, if his mother doesn’t get released from jail, he will have to leave school to take care of Jeremy, so he pays the money and returns Jeremy and his mother home and heads back to school to at least finish this semester. Joe continues to meet with Carl, who maintains his innocence, and delves deeper into the information he is able to obtain from Carl’s attorney. Although all of the evidence points to Carl as the perpetrator, he begins to see that there are discrepancies that make him start to believe that maybe Carl wasn’t guilty after all. After another altercation with his mother and his mother’s new boyfriend who has begun abusing Jeremy, he brings Jeremy to live with him in his apartment near school. All the while Lila and Joe become closer, and she not only helps Joe with his research into Carl’s case but helps with the responsibility of caring for Jeremy. The deeper Joe’s conversations with Carl become, and the more he learns about the murder of Crystal Hagen, he becomes increasingly doubtful that Carl could have committed the crime. Joe starts to reach out to those involved in the trial including Crystal’s boyfriend at the time, who was the last to see her alive, and her step-father who had allegedly been at the car dealership he owned the afternoon the murder took place. Joe is bombarded with new information and theories and begins to believe in Carl’s innocence, which sets him on a dangerous path to finally find the truth after thirty years. This book has amazing twists and turns and keeps you guessing until the very end. It’s very well written with rich characters and storylines, and is definitely a book that you have to set aside the time to read because it is extremely difficult to put down. For anyone who is a fan of the thriller or murder-mystery genres, I highly recommend this book. Even if you aren’t a fan of those genres, it’s still an amazing story. Hope you pick up a copy of your own and enjoy it for yourself! Taken from my blog:[...]

A bit of a slow start but soon you don’t want to put it down. Characters well developed. Dumb move going after the killer twice,

In his debut novel, author Allen Eskins has crafted a story that is deeply moving and thought-provoking, populated with compelling and empathetic characters, but also a fast-paced mystery. The Life We Bury is replete with surprising plot twists and long-held secrets, as well as pulse-pounding danger. Joe Talbot grew up in Minnesota with no father, an equally fatherless autistic brother, and an alcoholic bipolar mother. When Joe's maternal grandfather was alive, he brought stability to the family. Joe recalls him as "a quiet man who could command attention with a simple glance or nod, a man who possessed equal parts strength and gentleness and wore them not in layers, but blended like fine leather." However, his grandfather died tragically when Joe was just and since then, Joe's mother has been spiraling further out of control. Through hard work, hiding some of his earnings from his mother, and determination, Joe completed community college and has transferred to the University of Minnesota as a junior. As the story opens, Joe, 21 years old, is working as a bouncer and living in a small apartment with a bathroom across the hall as he pursues his studies. He needs to complete an assignment for his English class: write a biography about an elderly individual. So he proceeds to a senior center in search of a willing participant where the director steers him to Carl Iverson, a convicted murderer dying of pancreatic cancer. Eskins immediately draws his readers into the complexities of Joe's life. No sooner does Joe seem ready to launch into the project for his English class than he's sucked back into the life he left two hours away when his mother is arrested and demands that Joe bail her out. Because she left eighteen-year-old Jeremy home alone, Joe must race back to his mother's apartment to ensure Jeremy is safe. With no alternative arrangements available, Joe takes Jeremy back to his apartment with him and contemplates how he will juggle all of the demands upon him. Of course, Iverson is not an easy person to get to know. Aside from his debilitated physical condition, he was incarcerated for 30 years and is not eager to unburden himself by confessing his crimes to Joe. Joe is naive when he first meets Iverson and immediately gets the sense that there is much to learn about what really happened all those years ago, especially when Iverson cryptically declares that there is a difference between killing and murdering. "I've done both. I've killed . . . and I've murdered. . . . It's the difference between hoping that the sun rises and hoping that it doesn't." Eskins deftly guides readers through Joe's voyage of discovering the truth about Iverson's past, including his service in Vietnam, and how he came to be charged and convicted of murder. In the process, Joe also discovers much about himself, his relationships with his mother and brother, and his own strength and resilience. His is a dangerous journey to the truth and Eskins expertly keeps the action moving at a relentless pace that is all-the-more fraught because he has already made his readers care deeply about Joe, the truth, and his future. The Life We Bury is a beautifully crafted exploration of forgiveness, redemption, and the high price they often extract. Since he is a lawyer, Eskins get the legal and investigative details just right. But Eskins also proves himself an elegant writer, capable of exploring his characters' emotions and inner turmoil in a deeply effecting, but never over wrought manner. The Life We Bury is an impressive and promising debut novel. And fortunately, Joe's story continues in the sequel, The Shadows We Hide.

This book was very addictive. I had a hard time putting it down. I highly recommend this book. Happy reading.

This book kept you on the edge of your seat. Stumbled across this author by chance and glad I did. Now on to my second book of his.

Um suspense de alto nível. O personagem principal , Joe Talbert , um estudante iniciando a faculdade , tem que fazer trabalho biográfico. Por um acaso do destino , o entrevistado é Carl Iverson, veterano do Vietnam, que cumpria pena de 30 anos por assassinato. Ao longo das conversas entre os dois , e através de pesquisas do estudante , muita coisa é descoberta e com isto a história vai se modificando . O autor tem um estilo muito interessante. Procura não cair no lugar comum . O livro prende o leitor . Ótima leitura e distração para os que gostam do tema .

Great story, great grammar, story flows nicely, creditable storyline. Highly recommend. Really couldn't put book down. Thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The book came on time and was in very good condition (new), but I guess it won't stay long this way because it belongs to the kind of books who want to read and re-read. Although the whole plot was not really original (you can quicly guess what's going to happen), the characters that are depicted are really realistic and go under your skin. The hero is not a good-looking guy, Mr. perfect, but he is not a bad-boyish "ugly duckling" either. He is just someone who struggles a lot but try to keep its shit together. He has envy, he can be jealous of his autistic brother, just because he has better looks. And yes, he wants to impress the girl, living next door, who has quite a story herself too. She is not that pretty cheerleader, but she is not that dark lost soul either. She is just someone who had a hard time, but does not blame the world for it. And she has brains too. In all, without saying too much: alone for the main character's backstories, you should definitely buy this book. I di not say on purpose too much, to not spoil the story. But there is way more behind this two persons. The author knows the human nature as it really is (far away from clichés) and knows how to write a good story.