What You Have Left (2007)

REAL GONE DADDY A new widower who walks out on his 5-year-old girl sets the tone for Allison's captivating debut novel, What You Have Left

On the day of his wife's funeral, Wylie Greer drops off his 5-year-old daughter, Holly, at his father-in-law's South Carolina dairy farm and never returns. That act forms the core of What You Have Left, Will Allison's remarkable, understated novel in stories. Chapters hopscotch in time and point of view, encompassing Holly's steady and principled hubby, her auto-racing mom, and a variety of other characters whose flaws and very flawed decision making are both real and recognizable. Allison has a precocious knack for detail (''a nursing home...that smelled of Pine-Sol and pea soup'') and for plain, old-fashioned storytelling. A-