New Books In Literature

In Ryan Kenedy’s debut novel, The Blameless (University of Wisconsin Press 2023 ) we meet Virginia, an exhausted adjunct professor and divorced mother of an autistic five-year-old, whose father only takes him for one weekend a month. Virginia is lonely and struggling to make a living as an adjunct professor of English. When she learns that the man who murdered her father has been released from prison despite a life sentence, she decides to confront him and mete out his just punishment. She traces Travis Hilliard to a remote place in the Mojave Desert. He’s inherited his uncle’s trailer on an isolated strip of land and is trying to rebuild his life outside of prison. Because Virginia doesn’t have anyone to care for her little boy, she brings him along for the confrontation. Ryan Kenedy was born and raised in the working-class neighborhoods of California's Central Valley. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from California State University, Fresno, and has taught writing and literature for over twenty-five years