The Reconstructionist: A Novel

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: You wouldn't think that earning a pair of mechanical engineering degrees would lend itself to fine literature, but Nick Arvin is an exception: His thoughtful, offbeat, original sophomore novel, The Reconstructionist, has a caliber as unexpected as its author's. Antihero Ellis Barstow, whose half brother Christopher died young in a car crash, makes his living by conducting auto accident postmortems. He also loves his boss's wife, who--not coincidentally--was Christopher's high school girlfriend. It sounds complicated, but in the end all these likably flawed people are just trying to answer the same two questions: What happened? And whose fault was it? --Mia Lipman