Eradication

Miles (Anatomy of a Miracle) offers an incisive novel of a melancholy man’s ill-fated attempt to make a change in his life and a difference in the world. Adi, a former schoolteacher in an unnamed city, is at loose ends after the death of his young son, Jairo, 11 months earlier and the subsequent collapse of his marriage. Seeking an escape, he finds a job listing from a mysterious foundation to rescue a Pacific island’s endangered flora and fauna from an invasive goat population, and lands the gig. Equipped with a rifle, Adi grapples with his mission on the otherwise deserted isle, living in an abandoned seal hunter’s hut and making a pet of a carnivorous bird. When he wakes to find seven curious nanny goats on his doorstep, he decides against killing them because it would leave him with “seven carcasses strewn across what was essentially his front sidewalk.” Soon, the moral weight of his task begins to take its toll. An excellent storyteller, Miles leavens the grim material with moments of dark comedy and shepherds the plot to a series of poignant revelations about how Jairo died and the true cause of the island’s devastation. This one sneaks up on the reader. Agent: Sloan Harris, CAA. (Feb.)