In The Place Of Last Things by Michael Helm

A finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean region), and a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year

After his father’s death, Russ Littlebury inherits the task of driving his aunt to her winter home in Arizona. While in Montana, he promises the daughter of a family friend that he will search for her absconded boyfriend, Jack Marks — a man Russ will discover is manipulative, charismatic, and brutal. As Russ travels from the American Southwest to the underworlds of Juarez, Mexico, and back in time from Toronto to Saskatchewan, he confronts his last months with his father and his affair with an open-hearted woman whose convictions entangled them in a small deception, with unforeseen consequences. Fuelled by a sense of responsibility and a growing fascination with the elusive Marks, Russ finds himself unexpectedly face to face with his own past. Michael Helm’s highly acclaimed second novel takes the reader on a breathtaking journey that explores violence, conversion, and loss, and the uneasy consolations we sometimes find in faith and love.