Was she murdered? Did she run away? Instead of answering these questions, O'Brien raises even more as he slowly reveals past lives and long-hidden secrets. Included in this third-person narrative are "interviews" with the couple's friends and family as well as footnoted excerpts from a mix of fictionalized newspaper reports on the case and real reports pertaining to historical events--a melange that lends the novel an eerie sense of verisimilitude. If Kathy's disappearance is at the heart of this work, then John's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam is its core, and O'Brien uses it to demonstrate how wars don't necessarily end when governments say they do. In the Lake of the Woods may not be true, but it feels true--and for Tim O'Brien, that's true enough. --Alix Wilber

Product Description
First published to critical acclaim by Houghton Mifflin, Tim O'Brien's
celebrated classic In the Lake of the Woods now returns to the house
in a gorgeous new Mariner paperback edition. This riveting novel of love
and mystery from the author of The Things They Carried examines the
lasting impact of the twentieth century's legacy of violence and warfare,
both at home and abroad. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities
he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate
retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within
days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery
wilderness.