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Chris Bohjalian, author of The Amateur

1978: Temperatures are flirting with 90 on an August day when 18-year-old Mira Winston drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams into the temple of high school junior Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. He’s dead before the ambulance even arrives. In the wake of this terrible accident, Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira’s history of recklessness, and when Kenny’s father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman.

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

August 2026

I love when I don’t see the ending of a book coming. That’s exactly what happened when I read THE AMATEUR by Chris Bohjalian.

It is written in the voice of Mira Winston, who was once a young golf prodigy and is now a novelist. She is looking back at a horrendous incident that occurred when she was 18. She was hitting a golf ball into the practice net when the ball went through the net and killed Kenny Foster, a 17-year-old caddie who was reading a book while waiting to be called up for his next round.