THE SUNSHINE MAN

On the day of a prisoner’s release, a woman sets out to settle an old score.

“The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.” With that opening sentence, Stonex plunges us into the mind and world of Bridget “Birdie” Keller, a wife and mother in the rural countryside of Wiltshire, England. But Birdie’s world is not quite so tranquil: 18 years earlier, a man was incarcerated for killing Birdie’s half sister, Providence, and this is the day of his release, a day that Birdie has prepared for. Just as Birdie’s voice settles in comfortably, a second narrator emerges. James Maguire is the man convicted of killing Providence, and his voice and story prove to be just as immersive as Birdie’s. Shaped by Stonex’s skillful hands, a compelling picture emerges spanning the decades from 1947 to 1989. In a small Devon village where everyone knows everyone else’s business, the lives of several kids are ineluctably entwined. Some of their interconnections are due to Birdie’s kind, caring grandmother. Gamma raised Birdie and Providence after their mother abandoned them, and she welcomed James into her home at a critical time. Though the makeshift family initially works well, miscommunication and outright lies quickly set in. Stonex’s success doesn’t lie solely in the creation of two riveting narrators. She weaves evocative imagery throughout the text, from a piece of knitting “messy as a jellyfish” to a carpet stain shaped like the Isle of Wight and the titular Sunshine Man, a wooden scarecrow doubling as an ad for Yellowfields Seed Oil.

This thriller demonstrates on nearly every page the power of the written word.