{"product_id":"the-scapegoat-a-novel-9780374181451","title":"The Scapegoat: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"The Scapegoat is a novel of disquiet and disturbance  with an atmosphere of perfect dread. Think Patricia Highsmith or Jim Thompson  that blend of menace and brilliance. Sara Davis had me shivering. This is the debut novel of a marvelous new talent.\" Victor LaValle  author of The Changeling  N is employed at a prestigious California university  where he has distinguished himself as an aloof and somewhat eccentric presence. His meticulous  ordered life is violently disrupted by the death of his estranged fatherunanticipated and  as it increasingly seems to N  surrounded by murky circumstances. His investigation leads him to a hotel built over a former Spanish mission  a site with a dark power and secrets all its own. On campus  a chance meeting with a young doctor provokes uncomfortable feelings on the direction of his life  and N begins to have vivid  almost hallucinatory daydreams about the year he spent in Ottawa  and a shameful episode from his past.  Meanwhile  a shadowy group of fringe academics surfaces in relation to his fathers death. Their preoccupation with a grim chapter in Californias history runs like a surreal parallel to the staid world of academic life  where Ns relations with his colleagues grow more and more hostile. As he comes closer to the heart of the mystery  his ability to distinguish between delusion and reality begins to erode  and he is forced to confront disturbing truths about himself: his irrational antagonism toward a young female graduate student  certain libidinal impulses  and a capacity for violence. Is he the author of his own investigation? Or is he the unwitting puppet of a larger conspiracy?  With this inventive  devilish debut  saturated with unexpected wit and romanticism  Sara Davis probes the borders between reality and delusion  intimacy and solitude  revenge and justice. The Scapegoat exposes the surreal lingering behind the mundane  the forgotten history underfoot  and the insanity just around the corner.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67957337980981,"sku":"ByrdShop_0374181454","price":56.61,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780374181451.jpg?v=1794468043","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-scapegoat-a-novel-9780374181451","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}