How do we punish the guilty? If we’re guilty, how do we atone? For some crimes, it feels like no sentence is adequate. Nothing we do to the guilty will restore what was lost. The US justice system is a punitive one, to the point where AI has been used to create “risk assessments” and sentencing guidelines for people convicted of crimes. Kristin Koval’s novel, Penitence, wrestles with the unfairness of a system that wields a sledgehammer in every violent case, regardless of mental health, drug use, and other mitigating factors.
Our primary protagonist, Martine Dumont, is used to taking on cases that no other defense attorney will. She is notorious in the town of Lodgepole, Colorado, because of her belief that everyone deserves representation and as fair a trial as possible. That reputation causes David Sheehan to wake her up in the wee hours of the morning on his daughter’s behalf. That very night, Nora shot her brother, Nico. Nora hasn’t said a word since she killed her brother. There is no doubt that she did so. Apart from her father, everyone in Lodgepole behaves as though Nora has been tried, convicted, and sentenced. Martine recognizes her lack of experience in criminal law and calls in her son, Julian, to help. Unlike Martine, who mostly does divorces, wills, and other small-town law, Julian specializes in helping teenagers, especially those who are going to be tried as adults.
I thought that this plotline would be the major focus of Penitence; surely that’s enough story for any novel, right? Early in the book, there are hints that Julian and Nora’s mother, Angie, bear a lot of guilt for the death of Angie’s little sister. (It doesn’t take long for us to get the whole story.) After the ball gets rolling on Nora’s case, Koval gives us extended scenes from Julian’s past, his doomed relationship with Angie, how he became dedicated to juvenile criminal cases, and why he avoids Lodgepole as much as possible. There are also scenes in which Angie talks to her mother, now speechless from dementia, about how torn she is between grief and anger for her children. How is she supposed to feel when her son is dead and her daughter, the guilty party, is in prison? How can she fight for a daughter who took away her son? Especially when there doesn’t seem to be any reason Angie can see?
I was frustrated by how much of the book was about Julian rather than Nora. I never quite got to the bottom of Nora’s character or her motivation. I think I know what happened but I wished we’d spent more time in Nora’s mind rather than Julian’s, who I found much easier to figure out and, therefore, much less interesting. Penitence was a miss for me, in spite of the potential I saw in its premise.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.