Apology

A Novel

By: Jon Pineda

Narrated by: Emilio Delgado

When nine-year-old Tom Serafino’s twin sister Teagan suffers a debilitating brain injury, a police investigation implicates his playmate Mario’s unclean immigrant, transient worker known as Shoe. Innocent of the crime but burdened by his own childhood tragedy, Shoe takes the blame for what is in fact an accident caused by his young nephew, ensuring Mario’s chance at a future publicly unscarred.

The lines between innocence and guilt, evasions and half-truths, love and duty are blurred. Can a lie born from resignation, fear, and love transform tragedy into hope? And is the life of one man worth the price of that lie?

Told in vivid scenes alive with imagery and with thematic echoes of John Burnham Schwartz’s Reservation Road and Northwest Corner, Apology explores how the decisions we make in an instant reverberate in the years to come. Apology further paints a portrait of sacrifice within two immigrant families raising first-generation Americans. It explores the measure of duty we have toward one another, and the extent to which abandoning the wreckage of family and the past often leads to unexpected consequences.

Deeply empathetic and beautifully written, Apology marks the novelistic debut of a critically acclaimed Asian American writer.

©2013 Jon Pineda (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Apology is a perfectly paced, deeply satisfying novel. Jon Pineda renders his characters with a compassion that refuses to lapse into sentimentality.” (Ron Rash, New York Times best-selling author of Serena and The Cove)

"A spare and powerful novel about guilt, sacrifice, and the cruel butterfly effect sometimes triggered by our seemingly inconsequential acts. Pineda writes with precision and humanity." (Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving)

"Jon Pineda has written a novel that is, by any standard, an impressive success. Apology is a page-turner of ideas, and it shows us how our actions spin out in crazy directions, marbles that roll under our lives' furniture and come out in the most surprising times. I loved it." (Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and Eng)