Margot Livesey's The Boy in the Field

Three siblings, on the cusp of adulthood, lose their innocence over the course of a year when an act of violence infects their small town on the outskirts of Oxford. Meandering home from school, middle sister Zoe spots something in the field. Her brothers, Matthew and Duncan, follow behind her, at first puzzled, then horrified by the blood on the boy’s legs. A scene like this, Matthew thinks, is straight out of an Inspector Morse novel.

As Zoe holds the boy’s hand, quietly talking to him because somewhere she heard that that is the right thing to do, the boys get help and tragedy is averted. But the incident is the catalyst for a time of rude awakenings as each child grapples with the realization that no place is completely safe and secure, perhaps not even their own home.

Children cannot be fooled. Their intuition seems to be finely honed. Like the dog, Lily, that the family rescues, the children sense when someone or something is off. Matthew realizes that his girlfriend is not the person he thought she was and acts wisely on the information. Zoe rebuffs a reckless boy who might be putting her safely in jeopardy, and Duncan, dear Duncan, the youngest of the three, who has always looked and felt just a little bit different, whose dark skin and eyes are evidence of his adoption, decides it’s time to find his first mother.

Into this year of upheaval comes the added burden of the silence between their parents. Suddenly Hal has become moody, taking off for the weekends to pursue his photography, while Betsy throws herself into Greek lessons. Zoe sees her dad coming out of a coffee shop with a woman she doesn’t recognize, and Duncan overhears a conversation that weighs heavily on him.

Of course, every reader brings her own life experiences to a novel and what speaks deeply to one may not resonate with another. Still, I found that this book took me back to my teen years in a profoundly moving way, though I can say unequivocally that neither my brother, sister, nor I ever found a body in a field. I felt deeply connected to these young people and their parents. At a time when all the best sellers seem to be just copycats of “Gone Girl” or “Girl on a Train,” peopled with characters no one would want to waste a moment of their time with, “The Boy in the Field” is a deceptively simple, exquisite snapshot of a loving family facing the complexities of life with grace and courage.

Margot Livesey is one of those writers whose name may never appear on the New York Times top ten list. This is a fact about the publishing industry that will forever drive me right up a wall. So many authors working today consistently deliver novels of such nuance and lyricism but if not for librarians and bloggers their names will not likely become household words. This is Ms. Livesey’s tenth novel. Why not give her a go.