UNDER THE OAK WITH AGNES

In Smith’s novel, a middle-aged man confronts a life of lies in the wake of his mother’s death.

An urgent call from Spencer House hospice doesn’t just summon Emory Harrell home to small-town Rushton, North Carolina—it upends his life altogether. There’s much he’s leaving behind, including a shot at securing senior partner at a prestigious Atlanta law firm and a gorgeous and brilliant fiancee. Most importantly, he must relinquish any sense of control. Within a day of his arrival in Rushton, Emory’s beloved mother is dead. Her last words to him: “Quit trying so hard.” When Emory begins to volunteer at Spencer House, he meets Agnes, the mysterious nurse’s aide who witnessed his mother’s final moments. Emory begins to interrogate both the restrictive perimeters of his secure lifestyle and the very boundary between the living and the dead. What ensues is a heartfelt chronicle of a man undoing the seams of his carefully crafted existence, resulting in a transcendental, if devastating rejection of 50 years living the life of the mind. Emory’s reckoning with his own illusions of control is chock-full of lessons for a 21st-century life in which every new iteration of reality seems like something to be protected against. As the narrative reaches a stunning and unexpected resolution, Emory and Agnes celebrate “the chance to die while [we’re] still livin’,” disrupting all we assume we know about ourselves and the basis of our connections with others. What emerges in its place is something richer, a glimpse of the proverbial path not traveled despite its enticing offerings. Earnest and thoughtfully executed, this book shines a light on all of the phantom lives that are merely assemblages of the ghosts of expectations; it is, at its simplest, a reminder that “livin’ for certainty just keeps life flat.”

A thoughtful, tender meditation on mortality and transformation.