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In So Far Gone, author Jess Walter writes with wit, energy, and relatable characters.

Rhys Kinnick is a multidimensional creature you have to love, while you’re questioning his good sense.

His daughter Bethany thinks her dad is disappointed in her, and Rhys is sure he’s the disappointment.

“I felt like the world was drifting in one direction and I was going the other way,” Rhys says.

Protagonist Rhys Kinnick is like many contemporary journalists—unemployed, cynical, and hyper-aware of the chaos of the world. Once a respected environmental investigative reporter, he’s one of the many victims of mass layoffs throughout the media and, in his 50s, has no remotely similar prospects. Add to this a strained relationship with his beloved daughter Bethany, a son-in law who has become a Christian nationalist, a failed romantic entanglement, and the fallout from the 2016 election, and Rhys faces a crisis of sanity. “I felt like the world was drifting in one direction and I was going the other way,” he says.

The final straw is a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner conversation with his son-in-law Shane, in which both men are absolutely right, and Rhys unravels. He drives to his family’s 40-acre sheep farm outside of Spokane, on which sheep likely have never set a hoof, throws his cell phone (“a $600 Pop-Tart of modern science”) out the window,........

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