Penitence is a beautifully written novel, tackling one of the darkest subjects imaginable: the murder of a teenage boy by his own younger sister.

It happens in the small town of Lodgepole, Colorado in 2016 and the murderer is thirteen-year-old Nora Sheehan, who calls the police herself to confess that she has just shot and killed her brother Nico. Before the incident, Nora had seemed depressed and withdrawn, which may or may not have been related to Nico, who was less than a year older, being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s is a degenerative condition with no cure, so it’s possible that Nora may have thought she was helping her brother avoid a terrible fate – but is this true or is there another reason for what she did?

Martine Dumont, a seventy-two-year-old lawyer, is looking forward to her retirement when Nora’s parents, David and Angie Sheehan, ask her to take on one last case and defend their daughter. Martine accepts, but knows she is out of her depth and contacts her estranged son, Julian, whose speciality is criminal law. Julian has lived in New York for many years, but Angie was once his girlfriend, which makes the situation awkward. Although he agrees to return to Lodgepole and help with Nora’s case, being around Angie again brings back difficult memories for both of them.

When I first started to read, I was expecting this to be a crime novel, but that’s not really how I would describe it. The murder of Nico Sheehan is actually a relatively small part of the story; there’s never any doubt that Nora did it deliberately and it’s quite obvious why she did it, so there’s no mystery involved. We do get a lot of information on the laws surrounding the prosecution of child murderers, how they can sometimes be tried as adults rather than juveniles, and the sentences they can expect. We’re also given some insights into what life is like for Nora in the juvenile detention facility she is sent to while she’s awaiting trial.

The main focus of the novel, though, is on the topic of forgiveness and the various questions that arise from this. Why do we feel we have to assign blame when something tragic happens? How can we move on from this and find forgiveness for ourselves and others? How much penitence is enough? These things are explored not just through the story of Nico’s murder – in fact, I felt that relatively little time was spent on showing how David and Angie truly felt about one of their children killing the other – but also on the relationship between Julian and Angie and how it was affected by another tragedy decades earlier. This second storyline plays out in another timeline set in the 1990s/early 2000s and alternates with the Nora/Nico thread. However, I thought too many pages were devoted to this backstory and it made the whole book feel longer and slower than it really needed to be.

I did love the portrayal of Lodgepole, a small Colorado ski resort, and the way life there differed from Julian’s (and for a while, Angie’s) life in New York. An interesting setting, then, and an interesting subject – if only it had been more tightly plotted, it would have been an excellent book. I did like it, though, and found it quite thought-provoking. It’s Kristin Koval’s debut novel and I’ll be happy to read more.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.