A family divided and united by grief in "Split Estate"

"Split Estate"

by Charlotte Bacon

Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

290 pp., $24

The spiraling impact of a woman's suicide on her husband and children are at the heart of this beautifully observed, achingly credible new novel by Charlotte Bacon.

The book is predominantly set in rural Wyoming, with its majestic vistas and rugged citizenry.

That's where New York City lawyer Arthur King grew up. And it's where he brings his shellshocked adolescent kids, Cam and Celia, for the summer, after their depressed mother's sudden leap to her death from their 10th story apartment window.

This Westward-Ho! premise may conjure images of a bereft clan finding love, closure and a simpler, more fulfilling life in Big Sky Country. And if "Split Estate" was the blueprint for a Hallmark TV movie, so it would be.

But Bacon does not offer such easy comforts and closure in her sad, powerful book.

The tale is told from the keen perceptions and perspectives of Arthur, his kids and his caring but unsentimental Wyoming mother, Lucy.

All these people are drawn with admirable complexity. And the character of Wyoming is not romanticized either, as Bacon depicts how mines and condos are gobbling up swatches of wide open terrain, and the deep strain of violence that courses through the local culture.

She also charts a pair of adolescent infatuations that bring different kinds of disappointment — not to less sophisticated rural youths but to Manhattan-bred teens who in critical ways are more innocent and vulnerable than their Wyoming peers.

Bacon paints striking scenes of starkly lovely scenery, mountain storms and bucking wild horses. But such images are tightly woven into an intricate psychic landscape of memory and loss, as the family struggles to make sense of a shattering deed that feels so senseless.