Faraway Places

A vivid, hypnotic debut from 1988—now beautifully repackaged with a preface by the author and an introduction by A.M. Holmes—chronicling a thirteen-year-old boy in 1950s Idaho whose witnessing of a murder leads to a false accusation of a Black man that forever changes his view of his family and the world

During a fateful summer, 13-year-old Jake Weber witnesses the brutal murder of a Native American woman by the town banker. Jake's parents forbid him to speak of the killing or name its perpetrator, even as the woman's African American lover stands falsely accused. The crime and what follows it forever alter Jake's view of his parents and the world around him. Faraway Places won widespread praise for its vivid narrative and incantatory style, and Spanbauer displays singular skill in inhabiting the mind of a troubled adolescent boy.