Bestselling Author Lynn Stegner Presents "The Half-Life of Guilt"

The Johann Fust Library Foundation is delighted to present author Lynn Stegner at a Literary Series Event in the library courtyard and loggia. 

She will be in conversation with Nan Doyal and will speak about her latest novel, The Half-Life of Guilt, (University of New Mexico Press: High Road Books, September 2024.)

Lynn’s fiction has drawn comparisons to the works of Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, and Alice Munro. She is the daughter-in-law of the legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner. In this new novel, she tells the story of Clair Bugato, a biologist, and Mason Comstock, a photojournalist. Together, they journey to a remote area of Baja California, Mexico, to the world’s largest saltworks, where a proposed expansion threatens the California gray whale population, which recently came back from the brink of extinction.

In the midst of a conservation battle, they meet a mysterious son of Mexico, Rubio Cantú, who leads them to the powers that be. Their two-week journey sends Clair deep into the past, where she reviews the divergent paths she and her near-identical twin sister have taken away from a childhood tragedy. At the same time, Mason confronts his own unhappy past in Cornwall, England, with a father whose hate was stronger than his love.

The Half-Life of Guilt is woven from themes of homesickness only love can cure, environmental crises, the conflict between international commerce and planetary health, and the necessity of forgiveness. The novel delivers to the reader an engrossing and transformative literary experience.