Twenty-one-year-old Joe Talbert is trying to turn his life around, but the confining cage that has formed around him allows for little movement. He has never known who his father is. His mother is a long-time alcoholic who has become more and more violent, neglectful, and frequently disappears on benders or gets herself arrested. His younger brother, Jeremy, is autistic and needs almost constant supervision. Barely able to afford to do so, Joe leaves his home in Austin, Minnesota, "sneaking off like a boy running away to join a circus," to become a student at the University of Minnesota. The only English class open to him of any interest is a biography class in which he must "interview a complete stranger" because he doesn't want to interview his mom and there is basically no one else in his family who he knows. The thought occurs to him to go to a nursing home to interview a resident there... someone with a long life they can relate to Joe for his required class project, but his plan is dashed when he is informed that most of the residents "cannot take care of themselves. Most of them are suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia or some other neurological condition. They can't remember their own children, much less the details of their lives." There is, however, one exception. The Department of Corrections has paroled a prisoner and sent him to Hillview Manor because he is dying of pancreatic cancer--a convicted murderer who viciously "raped and killed a girl and then burned her body in a shed;" a real "monster" according to the Home's director. Joe Talbert's life is about to take a totally unexpected change of direction.The Life We Bury (2014) is the startling and skillful debut novel by Allen Eskens. Eskens' writing is done with flare. His choices of descriptions are fascinating and vivid and bring to life both time and place. For example, when describing an old apartment building he focuses upon the smell of the place, not the physical structure or its condition. The "odor that permeates" the air gives visitors a "split second of corruption as the taint of decay hits them square in the face." His characters are both realistic and enticing; they are complex individuals whose actions and words often do not reveal their true motivation. The very title of the novel has within it a sense of metaphor. Joe buries "thoughts deep inside, hiding them where they would remain undusted." His mother's drinking and carrying-on reflects an unfulfilled life of deep-seated frustration. Joe's new neighbor, Lila Nash, hides a humiliating past and is an enigma--cold and elusive with Joe, but warm and out-going to his mentally impaired brother.Foremost among the characters with a buried life is Carl Iverson--a former Vietnam veteran and decorated hero who, once accused of the heinous murder of Crystal Marie Hagen actually does all that he can to hasten his trial although doing so is likely to lend itself to him being found guilty. At Hillview Manor Iverson, who is in his mid-sixties but looks "closer to eighty," often refuses his pain medication just as he refuses chemo and spends every day just staring out the window. In Stage Four of his cancer, he may have "less than three thousand hours of life left to live." Surprisingly, after turning down requests for interviews for years, Iverson, knowing he is near death, agrees to be interviewed by Joe Talbert. He tells the young student: "this is my dying declaration. I don't care if anybody reads what you write. I don't even care if you write it down at all... I have to say these words out loud. I have to tell someone the truth about what happened all those years ago. I have to tell someone the truth about what I did."Eskens unveils his story in adroit fashion as Joe, the novel's narrator, learns not only about Carl's past from the dying man, but from transcripts of his trial and a diary written by the victim, some of which is in code--code that was never broken or utilized in the trial. Joe talks to Carl's defense attorney who admits that "it seemed to me that Carl Iverson wanted to go to prison" and also meets a man, Virgil Gray, who served in Vietnam with Carl. Virgil is the sole individual who believes in Carl's innocence--Carl having risked his life to save Virgil in a firefight with the Viet Cong. Further conversations with Berthel Collins, the policeman on the original murder case, and conversations with Detective Max Rupert about the thirty-year-old case further fuels the air of intrigue surrounding Carl Iverson and the sadistic murder of an innocent young girl.Half way through The Life We Bury it becomes obvious that the reader has been plunged into a full-fledged mystery. With Carl's enigmatic declaration that there is a difference between being a killer and a murderer and that he has been both, new evidence that is unearthed, and a second, previously untold terrifying story about an event in Vietnam in which Carl participated, Joe and Lila, become more and more certain that Iverson did not kill the Hagen girl. Even as events escalate in the tension between Joe and his mother over Jeremy's well-being, Joe and Lila set about to discover who is guilty of the teen's murder to clear Iverson's name before he dies. Adding to the allure of Joe and Lila's quest is another long-hidden story about Joe's youth--one that personally, obsessively drives him to uncover the truth.Filled with unimagined revelations, staggering plot twists, unforeseeable violence, and unbridled suspense as time is running out for Iverson The Life We Bury and its readers are propelled by the author to an amazing conclusion--one which is guaranteed to both please and move even the most jaded reader. It is hard to conceive a more satisfying reading experience from a first novel (or many other mystery thrillers) than what Allen Eskens delivers in The Life We Bury. [In his "Acknowledgements" Eskens states a "follow-up novel tentatively titled In the Path of the Beast" is scheduled for release in the fall.]