Sadly, this book suffered (greatly) from what I'll call "We Didn't Start the Fire" syndrome: the plot was unfortunately interrupted by long passages of lists about events from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Fellow readers, I skipped those parts and tried to find the next bit of plot.

The plot was actually interesting, tracing the friendship - dare I say Best Friends Forevership - of Nathan and Danny. They meet at age six, when Nathan cons Danny into sharing his baked ham sandwich and solidifies in their teens when Danny chooses friendship with Nathan over the bullying white kids (Nathan is black, by the way, and Danny white). The color difference is important because in South Carolina during that time those things mattered... except to Danny and Nathan. They run away from the draft, only to return when they learn that Danny was never called up and that he's inherited his family home. Then Nathan is killed, and Danny is put on death row for the killing of his BFF. What we hear about his friendship is told in flashback, with Danny on D-Block talking - sometimes to his priest, sometimes to himself - about how he ended up where he was.

As I said, that's pretty interesting. Losing pages to lists of events that in many ways have nothing to do with this story? Very similar to what happens in The Good Father and like that book lost my interest.

ARC provided by publisher.