The Good Man

An aging, damaged Korean War veteran returns to his native Montana to come to terms with his complex romantic past in Lee's powerful debut. After 40 years away, Gabriel Guttman returns to the Montana valley where he grew up, and where he left two women: one, Emily Cottage, the love of his youth, and the other a Korean woman (never named) whom he brought back to the U.S. after the war. The intervening years are a blur to Gabriel-a gunshot wound a few years back (probably self-inflicted, though he can't remember for sure) has left him one-eyed and muddle-headed. He soon learns that Emily Cottage is dead, and when he tracks down the Korean woman and joins her on the ranch where she's been living, he discovers that she has a teenage spitfire of a daughter named Yahng Yi. Deftly weaving together present and past, Lee repeatedly returns to the My Lai-like incident that brought Gabriel and Yahng's mother together, while gradually revealing the ties that bind mother and daughter to the corrupt rancher who owns their land, and to his no-good son. The complexity of the story slows the pace, but Lee compensates with brilliant character writing, superb use of his rural setting and a riveting climax that plays out during a brutal snowstorm. Agent, Laura Strachan.