A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE
A futuristic thriller about climate change by the acclaimed screenwriter of First Cow, Meek's Cutoff, and HBO's Mildred Pierce.
The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet's fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave.
Now, a Pacific Northwest journalist named Jack Henry who works for a struggling media company has received a tip that Cave is living in Mexico. Hoping the story will save his job, he travels south and, using a fake identity, makes contact with the fugitive. The two men strike up an unexpected friendship, leaving Jack torn about exposing Cave-an uncertainty further compounded by the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and a new romance with an old acquaintance. Who will really benefit from the unmasking? What is the nature of justice and punishment? How does one contend with mortality when the planet itself is dying?
Denial is both a page-turning speculative suspense novel and a powerful existential inquisition about the perilous moment in which we currently live. Jon Raymond is the author of five works of fiction, including the Oregon Book Award–winning story collection Livability and the Oregon Book Award–nominated novel Denial. As a screenwriter, he has collaborated on numerous films with the director Kelly Reichardt, including Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and First Cow. He also received an Emmy Award nomination for his screenwriting on the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet. He was the editor of Plazm Magazine, associate and contributing editor at Tin House magazine, and a member of the Board of Directors at Literary Arts. His writing has appeared in Zoetrope, Playboy, Tin House, The Village Voice, Artforum, Bookforum, and many other places. He lives in Portland, Oregon. "Narrator George Newbern gives an unflappable performance as Jack Henry, an investigative reporter who finds an escaped executive hiding in plain sight in Mexico. When Jack befriends Robert Cave, listeners can hear the sincere relationship between the two. Even so, Jack knows his discovery could enhance his reputation. Newbern does an excellent job of leading listeners through the complexities of Jack's transformation and his understanding of what it would mean to reveal the whereabouts of Cave."
