The Good Samaritan

Auteur

Toni Halleen worked for many years as an employment law attorney. She was born and raised in the Midwest and earned a B.A. in women's studies from Mount Holyoke College, and a JD from the University of Minnesota. Toni won a Mentor Prize in fiction from the Loft Literary Center, and her writing has appeared in Wigleaf, Structo, Gravel, the Star Tribune, and elsewhere. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

Résumé

A college professor is offered a chance at redemption—if he can figure out the right thing to do in this thoughtful psychological thriller from the author of The Surrogate.

Sociology professor Matthew Larkin is barely holding on. After the death of his toddler son, his wife divorced him, his teenage daughter abandoned him, and he lost a job he loved. Landing a rare tenure track position at a small college in southern Minnesota, he’s trying to cope with the disaster his life has become.

While driving down an empty highway in the middle of nowhere one gloomy Sunday evening, Matthew gets caught in a hailstorm. Pulling off the road to find shelter, he spies a disturbing sight. Caught in the car’s headlights is a child curled up beneath a plastic tarp. The boy is alive but unconscious, soaked to the bone and possibly hypothermic. Knowing an ambulance would take too long to reach them, Matthew impulsively puts the boy in his car, intending to get medical help.

On the way, the boy awakens and becomes agitated, begging Matthew not to take him to a hospital or to call the police. Matthew sympathizes with the panicked boy, who looks to be the same age his son would have been. Overcome by longing, grief, and a need to make sense of everything that’s happened to him, Matthew makes a dangerous choice—risking everything for a chance to face his past, move on from the pain, and forgive both his family and himself.