Excerpt from So Far Gone by Jess Walter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

One

What Happened to Kinnick

A prim girl stood still as a fencepost on Rhys Kinnick's front porch. Next to her, a cowlicked boy shifted his weight from snow boot to snow boot. Both kids wore backpacks. On the stairs below them, a woman held an umbrella against the pattering rain.

It was the little girl who'd knocked. Kinnick cracked the door. He rasped through the dirty screen: "Magazines or chocolate bars?"

The girl, who looked to be about ten, squinted. "What did you say?"

Had he misspoken? How long since Kinnick had talked to anyone? "I said, what are you fine young capitalists selling? Magazines or chocolate bars?"

"We aren't selling anything," said the boy. He appeared to be about six. "We're your grandchildren."

A sound came from Kinnick's throat then—a gasp, he might have written it, back when he wrote for a living. Of course they were his grandchildren. He hadn't really looked at their faces. And this strange woman on the steps had thrown him. But now that he did look, he saw family there, in the pronounced upper lip, and the deep-set, searching eyes. No, clearly this was Leah and Asher. Christ! When had he seen them last? He tried to remember, straining to apply an increasingly muddled concept: time. His daughter had brought them up here for a short visit one afternoon. When was that, three years ago? Four?

Either way, these were not strangers selling candy for their school. These were his grandkids, flesh and blood of Rhys Kinnick's flesh and blood, his only child, Bethany. But older than six and ten. More muddled time work was required to figure out how much.

"Mr. Kinnick?" The woman with the umbrella was speaking now.

"Yes," he said. "I'm Kinnick." He addressed the kids again. "Is . . . is everything . . . Are you . . ." The thoughts came too quickly for his mouth to form around them. He opened the door wider. "Where's your mother?"

"We're not sure," Leah said. "Mom left a couple of days ago. She said she'd be back in a week. Shane left yesterday to find her." This was thirteen-year-old Leah. Her father was Bethany's old boyfriend Sluggish Doug, long out of the picture.

The boy, eight, no nine! Nine-year-old Asher was Shithead Shane's kid.

Oh, the riddle of time—and of Bethany's taste in men.

Kinnick looked at the woman behind his grandchildren. She was Black, with big round glasses, in her thirties, if he had to guess, roughly his daughter's age. She climbed the last step onto the porch.

"I'm Anna Gaines," the woman said. "My husband and I live in the same apartment complex as Bethany and Shane. This morning, Leah came over with this." She held out an envelope. On it, written in Sharpie in Bethany's handwriting: "FOR ANNA." Below that: "in case of emergency."

"Mom left it in the closet," Leah said, "in one of my snow boots."

Kinnick opened the front screen, came out, and took the envelope. He removed a single sheet of paper, handwritten on both sides in Bethany's neat, backward-leaning script. He patted his shirt pocket for his readers, then squinted to make out the note:

Dear Anna. If you're reading this, I had to leave in a hurry. I know this is a lot to ask but can you take the kids to my father, Rhys Kinnick. He is a recluse . . .

Kinnick looked up. "I am not a recluse." He looked down and began reading again.

Dear Anna. If you're reading this, I had to leave in a hurry. I know this is a lot to ask but can you take the kids to my father, Rhys Kinnick. He is a recluse who cut off contact with our family . . .

"I did not 'cut off contact.' It was—" Rhys felt his blood rising. "Complicated." But his grandchildren just stared at him, apparently as uninterested in nuance and complexity as everyone else in the world. Kinnick grunted again and went back to reading.

Excerpted from So Far Gone by Jess Walter. Copyright © 2025 by Jess Walter. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.