About this item
"The Current is a rare creature: a gripping thriller and page-turner but also a masterwork of mood and language - a meditation on memory and time. You'll want to go fast at the same time you'll be compelled to savor each and every word." - Ivy Pochoda, author of Wonder Valley Tim Johnston, whose breakout debut Descent was called "astonishing," "dazzling," and "unforgettable" by critics, returns with The Current, a tour de force about the indelible impact of a crime on the lives of innocent people. In the dead of winter, outside a small Minnesota town, state troopers pull two young women and their car from the icy Black Root River. One is found downriver, drowned, while the other is found at the scene - half frozen but alive. What happened was no accident, and news of the crime awakens the community's memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may still live among them. Determined to find answers, the surviving young woman soon realizes that she's connected to the earlier unsolved case by more than just a river, and the deeper she plunges into her own investigation, the closer she comes to dangerous truths, and to the violence that simmers just below the surface of her hometown. Grief, suspicion, the innocent and the guilty - all stir to life in this cold northern town where a young woman can come home, but still not be safe. Brilliantly plotted and unrelentingly propulsive, The Current is a beautifully realized story about the fragility of life, the power of the past, and the need, always, to fight back.
About the Author
Tim Johnston's newest novel is THE CURRENT (2019, Algonquin) . He is also the author of the New York Time's bestselling novel DESCENT (2015, Algonquin) , the story collection IRISH GIRL (2009, UNT Press) , and the YA novel NEVER SO GREEN (2002, Farrar, Straus & Giroux) . A New York Times, USA Today, and Indie National bestseller, DESCENT has been published internationally and optioned for film. The stories of IRISH GIRL have won an O. Henry Prize, the New Letters Award for Writers, and the Gival Press Short Story Award, while the collection itself won the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Tim holds degrees from the University of Iowa and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and was a carpenter for most of his adult life. He was the 2015 Iowa Author, and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa. For more, please go to www.timjohnston.net.On Twitter: @TJohnstonWriterOn Facebook: TimJohnston.Writer
