Will I love Saving Emma?

Allen Eskens is adept at melding literary fiction with crime, mystery, suspense, and psychological thriller.

In this book, his lawyer-protagonist (Boady) is trying to save two unrelated people: the teen-aged Emma, but also Elijah, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital, convicted of murder. And he has to save himself.

I love how these stories are interwoven, how Boady struggles with family, his work with the Innocence Project, and his own grief, fears, and failings. I found the Elijah story especially gripping—to save Elijah, he must unpick the knots that keep Elijah from helping himself, and at the same… show more.

I've read all of Allen Eskens' novels, and every time I finish one, I think it was my favorite.

Since I read this novel in 2024, it's my current favorite of his, and it skyrocketed to the top of my favorite reads this year. I loaned it out, and can't wait to get it back to reread it, and see how he planted so much in a few hundred pages. I don't reread novels very often, either, but I want to dig through it to absorb how he did this one.

Eskens does not write series, but his characters tie… show more.