A Trick of Nature — Suzanne Matson

"A compelling, unpredictable narrative that moves beyond its calm suburban setting into darker social and psychological territory…[Matson] is a writer of uncommon wisdom and emotional depth." -- Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher

Greg Goodman is a very ordinary guy -- a not-very-ambitious school teacher and football coach who takes his attractive wife, Patty, their twin adolescent daughters, and the comfortable ease of their suburban routine for granted. Until lightening strikes -- both literally and figuratively -- as Greg runs a pattern with his junior varsity team during a muggy August practice and fifteen-year-old Timothy Phelps is directly struck. This crisis threatens to unravel all the strands anchoring Greg to his normal habits of being. When Timothy's mother, a stripper and addict who abandoned Timothy as a child, enters the mix, Greg discovers his own complicated and misguided longings.

As in her debut novel, Suzanne Matson employs "crisp, clean writing…[and] compassionately drawn characters" (New York Times Book Review) to create a gripping story about the nature of love, trust, family, and marriage. Set in a seemingly safe world of split-levels and carefully tended lawns, A Trick of Nature powerfully captures the characters' emerging self-awareness as they are forced to test the assumptions they hold about themselves and the connections that bind them.