About Featured Book: Renner’s Reboot by John McNamara

On the morning of 9/11, Benjamin Renner, late for his appointment with the client firm in the Twin Towers, commits to the unthinkable: let the world…his wife, his family, his colleagues…believe he perished in the horror of the morning. A phrase from childhood echoes: do-over, and its adult equivalent, reboot. Can he pull off such a deception? Help comes in the form of an older woman to whom he confesses his plan and who assists him for reasons she refuses to reveal.
Renner, now Jim Tanner, begins a fifteen-year odyssey, constantly on guard, crisscrossing the country on buses, never remaining in one place long enough for people to grow close to him. Coping with the challenge of maintaining an untethered life fosters guilt, paranoia, and loneliness. Living while looking over his shoulder taxes his determination, but he maintains the façade. He labors as a transient worker from the Pacific Northwest to Key West, accepting an existence disparate to his middle-class upbringing. During his travels, he writes journal entries, letters to his wife, to his family, which he never intends to send, as well as introspective letters to Eve, the woman whose beneficence enabled escape from his previous life. She saves each envelope in a trunk in her Brooklyn home. [Read more…] about Featured Book: Renner’s Reboot by John McNamara