Allen Eskens, THE LIFE WE BURY

Joe Talbert is a student with a writing assignment.  He must interview an elderly person and write his or her biography.  Joe ends up interviewing Carl Iverson, a man convicted of raping and murdering a teenaged girl many years before.  He has recently been transferred from prison to a nursing home because he is dying of cancer.

As Joe comes to know Iverson, he becomes more and more convinced of his innocence, and takes as his mission to prove it in the little time Iverson has left.  This leads him on a complex journey into what happened many decades before.  It also takes him on a trip into his own past as he and Iverson discover they both have guilty secrets.  This is Eskers first book, and it makes very few false steps in a story that is both action-packed and emotionally exciting.