THE DIG

A young lawyer haunted by war trauma struggles to balance family loyalty against personal ambition.

It’s 2014. We meet the protagonist of Burt’s debut novel, Antonia King, as she chats with a wealthy Swedish airplane manufacturer in Minneapolis. He’s in town to start a factory, and Antonia—fresh out of Harvard Law School but reluctantly drawn back to Minnesota, where she has roots—is trying to help a fancy law firm land a major client. She does. But it leads to escalating clashes with her family and revelations about her past. Originally from Sarajevo, Antonia lost her parents to Milosevic’s genocide in the early 1990s, when she was 3. She and her brother, Paul, were adopted by two brothers from a small town in Minnesota, Christopher and Edward King. The orphaned siblings eventually end up living with Christopher, the rich owner of King Family Construction, and his family. Antonia promised to consider working for him after law school; he’s furious when she chooses the Swedish CEO instead. When her activist brother, Paul, who lives in their small hometown’s Somali community, goes missing after a violent protest at the site of their father's dream project—a glorified strip mall, the big dig of the title—Antonia agrees to help Christopher with damage control. She reunites with her tipsy adoptive mother, closeted gay brother, Instagram influencer sister, and an icky old flame with political clout—all while trying to quell a sex scandal for her new boss. Burt layers all of this on in a rapid-fire style and places Antonia in too many scenes with minor characters. The writing shines in the few moments of intimacy between people before Burt delivers a big reveal. But Antonia as a character fails to come to life even as she learns a real lesson about cutting the ties that bind.

An original yet ultimately flat family drama.