Atticus Atticus, a deeply affecting novel by Ron Hansen, opens in winter on the high plains of Colorado to the tropics of Mexico, as well as from the realm of whodunit detective mystery to the larger realm of the Mystery, which has its own heartbreaking, consoling, and redemptive logic. Misunderstanding, dissolute, prodigal, wayward, wastrel, alias, and bribery are only a few words that tell the powerful story of Atticus. The case was labeled as a …showed first 75 words of 824 total…

…showed last 75 words of 824 total…the prose. Here is the sound of a Mexican jitney: "The pandemonium in the engines was like iron pans being clapped together." Here, the look of a gin mill after a shooting: "Tatters and silks of gunsmoke still hung by the ceiling." And in Colorado, the snow "strayed over the geography as though recalling how it was to be water." In the splendid "Atticus," Ron Hansen displays both an unblinking eye and a forgiving heart.