At a loose end after college, Ellis Barstow drifts back to his hometown and takes a job as a reconstructionist - investigating and recreating the details of fatal car accidents. Ellis forms a bond with his boss John Boggs, who believes that if two cars meeting at an intersection can be called an accident, then anything can - where we live, what we do, even who we fall in love with.
For Ellis these things are certainly no accident and he harbours two secrets of his own. The car crash that killed his half-brother is a memory that still haunts him, and his feelings for John's wife threaten to blow apart the men's lives. As Ellis tries to make sense of his own life, the story's momentum builds to a desperate race towards confrontation, reconciliation and survival.
At a loose end after college, Ellis Barstow drifts back to his home town and a strange profession: reconstructing fatal traffic accidents. He seems to take to the work immediately , and forms a bond with his boss and mentor, John Boggs, an intriguing character of few but telling words.
Yet Ellis is harbouring a secret. He was drawn to the reconstructionist's grisly world by the fatal crash that killed his half-brother Christopher and that still haunts him; in fact his life has been shaped by car accidents. Boggs, in his exacting way, would argue that 'accident' is not the right word, that if two cars meeting at an intersection can be called an accident then anything can - where we live, what we do, even who we fall in love with.
For Ellis these things are certainly no accident. And he harbours a second, more dangerous secret, one that threatens to blow apart the men's lives and which, as the story's quiet momentum builds, leads to a desperate race towards confrontation, reconciliation and survival.
