NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

A son's collapse pulls his two mothers together and apart in a novel that probes the limits of love, hope, and forgiveness

In Norway, thousands of miles from home, a student drops dead on the street. A passerby revives his heart, but he remains in a coma from which he may never wake. His mothers rush across the continent to his bedside where they endure the strain of helpless waiting. As the tense hospital vigil continues day after day and they vacillate between extremes of hope, fear, and psychic pain, their troubled relationship is pushed to the edge.

A profound exploration of a family in crisis, Trondheim portrays the way each woman copes with the looming tragedy and the possibility of healing in the wake of a life-altering emergency.