Angels Crest

By: Leslie Schwartz

Narrated by: Susan Denaker

It only takes a moment for a life to change forever.

Ethan Denton is a lucky man. Most things have gone his way, and being granted full custody of Nate, his young son and “North Star,” has given him a near-perfect life. On a crisp winter morning just before the start of deer season, Ethan and Nate set off together to discover the beauties of the forest. As he parks the truck, Ethan spots a pair of magnificent bucks, and, eager to take a closer look, leaves Nate asleep in the car seat, a brief, impulsive decision any parent might make. When he returns only a few minutes later, the door of the truck is open and Nate is nowhere to be seen.

As an unexpected blizzard blankets the woods, Ethan searches for the missing three-year-old with the help of other townspeople: Ethan’s ex-wife and his ex-best friend; an older Jewish judge, whose concern and involvement is colored by recent problems with his own son; a middle-aged lesbian couple; and others touched by the crisis. Nate’s disappearance brings up past wounds for everyone, but also miraculously provides the chance for love and redemption as they struggle to make sense of the inexplicable.

ANGEL’S CREST is a beautifully wrought work, a seamless blend of dramatic suspense and emotional truth.©2004 Leslie Schwartz; (P)2004 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

Praise for Angels Crest

“A tender, closely observed tale in which a tragedy in a small mountain town reverberates among its eccentric cast of residents. Each deeply wounded in his or her experience of life, they nevertheless form a community in which loss can be held and a future made possible. Leslie Schwartz writes with precision and grace.”
—Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

“Leslie Schwartz writes with stunning clarity about small town life at high altitudes—the ever-shifting counterpoints of community and isolation, exile and belonging, idle gossip and fierce loyalties. She evokes the breathtaking beauty and brutal indifference of the Sierran landscape—and, it would seem, of angels—and casts her loving yet unblinking eye on the lapses and compulsions that make even the best of us monstrous and, therefore, irremediably human. Schwartz understands on a fundamental level that we are all cut from the same cloth and thus require and deserve each other’s love, pity and, above all, mercy. Angels Crest is a numinous, gorgeous book.”
—Michelle Huneven, author of Jamesland