Once Joe talks to Carl and Carl's friend Virgil, he decides to dig much deeper into Carl's past and realizes that Carl might have been wrongly accused of rape and murder. Carl was a hero in Vietnam and has spent thirty years in prison for the murder he committed but is now a resident of a nursing home, as he dies of pancreatic cancer. Joe chooses Carl Iverson, a convicted rapist and murderer of a fourteen year old girl. Joe's English writing assignment is to write a brief biography of a stranger.

But he gets pulled back into his mom's life because Jeremy will always need him and because his mother keeps needing him to bail her out of trouble. Joe has finally gotten away from his mom by going to college in another town, while he works as a bouncer at a bar.

His mom just hangs on to Jeremy for his Social Security checks. Joe's eighteen year old brother, Jeremy, is autistic and Joe is the only person on his side. Joe's had a hard life already, with a deadbeat, alcoholic mom and no father in sight. The Life We Bury features twenty year old college student Joe Talbert. Boady Sanden was fifteen years old Nothing More Dangerous and he's a college professor in The Life We Bury, although he plays only a small part in the second book. Over time, I'm going to try to listen to all of Eskens books because I've enjoyed these first two so much. Listening to Nothing More Dangerous, by Allen Eskens, led me to the earlier book The LIfe We Bury.

The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert #1) by Allen Eskens (Author), Zach Villa (Narrator) Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout? But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.Īs Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class.

Review the life we bury