Winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award
"O'Connor speaks softly and somehow manages to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters...in a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word"–The New York Times Book Review
"Astonishing...Introducing an amazing new talent to the world of fiction."–Library Journal (Starred Review)
“Tender, haunting, exquisitely profound… an eloquent celebration of familial love made all the more poignant by tragedy.” –Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers
It is the autumn of 1999. A year has passed since Lucy Darby’s sudden and unexpected death, leaving her husband David and son Whitley to mend the gaping hole in their lives. David, a trauma-site cleanup technician, spends his nights expunging the violent remains of strangers, helping their families to move on, though he is unable to do the same. Whitley – an 11 year-old social pariah known simply as The Kid – hasn’t spoken since his mother’s death. Instead, he communicates through a growing collection of notebooks, living in a safer world of his own silent imagining.
As the impending arrival of Y2K casts a shadow of uncertainty around them, their own precarious reality begins to implode. Questions pertaining to the events of Lucy’s death begin to haunt David, while The Kid, who still believes his mother is alive, enlists the help of his small group of misfit friends to bring her back. As David continues to lose his grip on reality and The Kid’s sense of urgency grows, they begin to uncover truths that will force them to confront their deepest fears about each other and the wounded family they are trying desperately to save.
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Watch: Untouchable Trailer 1 (Music by Signal Hill)
Watch: Untouchable Trailer 2 (Music by Signal Hill)
Listen: The first chapter of Untouchable.
Read: Untouchable in the New York Times.