Scott Turow meets Raymond Chandler in this moody, gritty legal noir about Santi, an idealistic young man who returns home to Reno, Nevada, to work as a public defender and gets embroiled in a murder case he cannot shake-by a critically acclaimed writer who is also a public defender.
What if justice isn't something the legal system is truly capable of?
Set in Reno, Nevada, The Silver State follows the career of a public defender from his first years as an idealistic law school graduate, through the cases that chip away at his belief in the very work he was so drawn to. When Santi receives a letter from a former client now on death row, he is forced to reexamine his role in the case he'll never recover from.
The letter is from death row inmate Michael Atwood, convicted almost a decade earlier of murdering Anna Weston, whose body was found on a roadside near Reno's infamous silver mines. The public had been obsessed with the disappearance of Anna, a pretty young mother, and the cops were under tremendous pressure to make an arrest. Atwood is linked to the murder by scant physical or testimonial evidence, and as the case moves quickly towards trial Santi and his mentor in the public defender's office, C.J., become increasingly convinced that they are representing an innocent man. And Santi, meanwhile, almost sacrifices everything good in his life-love, family, friendship-for what may be a lost cause.
With an author who is also a criminal defense attorney, The Silver State brings to vivid life the seamy deals that get cut in the name of justice. And as this gritty novel, populated by drifters, petty criminals, and jaded lawyers who like drinking and fishing a lot more than they like their clients, moves from the casinos of Reno to its desert outskirts, Urza pulls off a full-of-surprises tale of justice gone awry. Gabriel Urza teaches in the MFA program at Portland State University and continues practicing as a criminal defense attorney. His first novel, All That Followed (Henry Holt & Co., 2015), was a New York Times Editor's Choice, an Indie Next List Selection, a Best Crime Fiction Debut by Booklist, a Best of Summer book by Publisher's Weekly, and received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. "Astonishing. Urza's tour of the American jurisprudence apparatus is intense and stunning. What makes it terrifying, and utterly riveting, is the cast of humans he sends into the teeth of that apparatus-people conjured with such deft perception, such deeply felt empathy, that one is physically relieved to come up from these pages and realize it is not one's own life, one's own soul, being decided. The Silver State does this wondrous and exceptional thing: it takes you into custody and will not let you go until its final and devastating revelations-and not even then. A breathtaking novel by a first-rate writer."-Tim Johnston, bestselling author of Descent, The Current, and Distant Sons With The Silver State, Gabriel Urza marries a poetic legal thriller with midlife crisis noir. Written in a terrifically stylish hardboiled Great Basin lyric, the novel is an elegy for the guilty and innocent alike, particularly those destroyed by the carceral state. A scathing, mournful and long-overdue autopsy of justice in the American imagination-Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness "This intricate, hilarious, heartbreaking novel takes us deep into the American criminal justice system, as seen by a young public defender whose clients are often condemned-by poverty, racism, addiction, and indifference-long before they enter a courtroom. THE SILVER STATE is as riveting as a thriller, yet it is also the story of a society's ethical erosion. Asking us to think hard about what passes for "justice for all" in the 21st century, it speaks powerfully and directly to our political moment."-Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks "Gabriel Urz
