The Possibilities: A Novel
*Starred Review* Three months after her 21-year-old son, Cully, is killed in an avalanche, Sarah St. John decides to go back to work. But her job as cohost of Fresh Tracks, a program that is piped into the hotel rooms of Breckenridge, Colorado, now seems inane. Added to that, when Sarah and her best friend, Suzanne, clean out Cully’s room, they find evidence that he was selling pot. More surprises about Cully come to light when a girl named Kit appears on Sarah’s doorstep. Soon it is revealed that Cully and Kit had a relationship, and Sarah and her father, Lyle, with whom she shares her house, are drawn to Kit because she seems to make Cully more reachable. The whole of what Sarah calls her “tribe”—Sarah, Lyle, Suzanne, and Kit, along with Cully’s dad, Billy, whom Sarah never married—go on a road trip to Colorado Springs to attend a memorial service for Cully, and the trip helps them find a way to move forward and achieve a measure of peace. As she did in The Descendants (2007), Hemmings deftly deploys her idyllic setting, leavens tragedy with humor, avoids sentimentality, and offers characters whom readers will find very appealing.       HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Anticipation will be running high for the second novel from Hemmings, whose debut, The Descendants, has been published in 20 other countries and was made into an Oscar Award–winning film directed by Alexander Payne and starring George Clooney. --Mary Ellen Quinn