Long Black Veil

The premise: In 1980 six college friends enter the ruins of a prison and one goes missing. The story is mostly told by one of those people. The first quarter of the book shifts in time from chapter to chapter: from the event in 1980 to 1987, back to 1980 and finally to 2015. It seemed that there were too many characters and the story was very choppy. I am glad I persevered because I did enjoy the story from that point on. The focus is on the primary character and how he was able to live his best life, but not without a cost. The friends had all agreed after the incident not to have contact and so as other stories are told of their lives we see that they were all “stuck” in their lives. In 2015 the remains are found and the friends contact each other all they all show up at her memorial service. And they see that life is about the choices we make, the repercussions of those choices and whether we have the courage to move forward.

This is the first Jennifer Finney Boylan work that I've read and it won't be the last. I thoroughly enjoyed this. The story was exciting and I was eager to see how it ended. Once I got over the jerky back-and-forth style and into the flow of the text, it was a good read.