What really happened? Joe aims to find out, with the help of Lila Nash, the neighbor with whom Joe finds himself falling in love. He calls this his “dying declaration”: an opportunity to clear his conscience and confess the truth before he dies.Īs Joe interviews Carl over the course of several weeks, as well as talking to the one living friend Carl has and pouring over newspaper accounts of the thirty-year old brutal rape and murder of a beautiful young girl, the incongruities in Carl’s wartime valor and the heinous crime he was convicted of grow ever larger and more disturbing.

Carl agrees to be interviewed by Joe, and to be the subject of his writing assignment. Carl has served thirty years in prison for the rape and murder of a fourteen-year old girl, and has been released on medical parole because he is quickly dying of pancreatic cancer. The staff grudgingly directs him to the home’s only resident who doesn’t have dementia or Alzheimer’s: Carl Iverson, a frail, sickly, solitary figure who sits in a wheelchair staring out a window. Not surprisingly, though, Joe can’t seem to shake completely free he continues to be reeled back, mostly by his loyalty to and feelings of responsibility for Jeremy.Īssigned to write the biography of an interesting person for his college English class, Joe, destitute of family members beyond his mother and brother, heads to a local nursing home, hoping to find a willing subject. He is managing to attend college and pay for it by the skin of his teeth, determined not to become just another casualty of his family’s dysfunction. Joe, a complex character in his own right, is attempting to escape his bipolar, alcoholic, abusive mother, and to an extent, his autistic brother, Jeremy. The Life We Bury – which I kept thinking could have been subtitled “Confessions” for all of the various characters’ deep secrets that are slowly revealed – centers around college student Joe Talbert, who narrates, and Carl Iverson, a Vietnam vet and convicted murderer.

The life we bury author