The Second Coming

A Novel

By: Garth Risk Hallberg

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos, Gail Shalan

From the New York Times best-selling author of City on Fire comes an intimate epic that plunges us deep into the lives of a troubled teenage girl and her estranged father when he returns home in an attempt to save her. Navigating love, grief, betrayal, and redemption, Jolie and Ethan must find a way to survive as a family.

“Beautiful and daring.”—Nathan Hill, author of Oprah’s Book Club pick Wellness • “Breathtaking.”—Christina Baker Kline, author of #1 New York Times best seller Orphan Train

Spring, 2011. When thirteen-year-old Jolie Aspern goes down onto the subway tracks to retrieve her dropped phone—and nearly gets hit by a train—the last thing she wants is sympathy from her estranged dad, Ethan. A recovering addict and felon, now living in California, Ethan has long struggled to see beyond himself. But when news of Jolie’s accident reaches him, Ethan comes to fear she’s in more serious trouble than anyone realizes. And believing he’s the only one who can save her, he decides to return home.

So begins the journey of Jolie and Ethan, father and daughter, apart and together, different yet the same. It will stretch from Manhattan in the midst of the Great Recession to a remote beach on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where their lives really began. In time, it will push Jolie out past her depth with a mysterious stranger, and Ethan in over his head with his first love—Jolie’s mom.

Soaring, aching, full of revelation, The Second Coming is at once an incandescent feat of storytelling and an exploration of an enduring mystery: Can the people we love ever really change?

©2024 Garth Risk Hallberg (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“At its core, this is a tale of the love that makes a family and how it does so.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Reading Garth Risk Hallberg is a constant delightful surprise—you never know what’s coming next: a gorgeous turn of phrase, a perfect pop culture reference, a brilliant new observation, a jaw-dropping plot twist. And all of these gifts are on full display in The Second Coming, a story about a father bound up by his mistakes, a daughter bound up in her silence, and a family in need of saving. It’s a beautiful and daring novel, as inventive as it is breathtaking.”—Nathan Hill, author of Wellness

“A portrait of a daughter in crisis and a father in need of redemption, Garth Risk Hallberg’s The Second Coming is a powerful statement about the clarifying sense of purpose to be found in parental love, and how we demand more of ourselves for the sake of our children. Hallberg’s Ethan is a fascinating study in whether a certain kind of arrested American male, consumed early on by purposelessness and addiction, can in fact have a second act, even if his first is still, somehow, belatedly, being written, and not entirely by him.”—Matthew Thomas, author of We Are Not Ourselves

Hard to follow

I did not enjoy this audio book. Too difficult to follow and understand. Maybe the hard copy is better.