Summer of Hate

"In his journal, Paul liked to make lists: What he ordered from Commissary(shaving cream, toothpaste, deodorant, the transistor radio he had for a week before the guards tookit away). The books he picked off the cart (The Bible, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Codependent NoMore.) What phone calls he made and received; also, Bible Study certificates, letters and cards, hisworkout routines and his moods (Anxious, Nervous, Trusting in God, but mostly Depressed). Paul has arecord of every push-up he did while he was in prison but he cannot remember shit about whathappened before his arrest."--from Summer of Hate

Wakingup from the chilling high of a near-death sex game, Catt Dunlop travels to Albuquerque in 2005 toreinvest some windfall real-estate gains and reengage with something approximating "reallife." Aware that the critical discourse she has used to build her career as a visitingprofessor and art critic is really a cipher for something else, she hopes that buying and fixingslum buildings will bring her more closely in touch with American life than the essays shewrites.

In Albuquerque, she becomes romantically involved with Paul Garcia, arecently sober ex-con who has just served sixteen months in state prison for defrauding HalliburtonIndustries, his former employer, of $873. Almost forty years old, Paul is highly intelligent buthas only been out of New Mexico twice. He has no information. With Catt's help, he makes plans toattend UCLA, only to be arrested on a ten-year-old bench warrant en route.

Caughtin the nightmarish Byzantine world of the legal system, Catt and Paul's empathic attempts to saveeach other's lives seems doomed to dissolve. Summer of Hate is a novel aboutflawed reciprocity and American justice, recording recent events through the prism of a beleagueredromance. As lucid and trenchant as ever, Kraus in her newest novel reminds us that the writer can bea first responder of sorts when power becomes invisible, or merely banal.