We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston.

We Burn Daylight

Bret Anthony Johnston is an author whose work leaves me breathless. Taking on difficult—impossible—human experiences and tragedies, he narrows perspective to one or two people. In We Burn Daylight, those perspectives come from two teenagers experiencing a Branch Davidian-like charismatic leader, law enforcement and the inevitable destruction of what each represents.

Roy is the second son of the small-town sheriff father and hospice nurse mother. There older son is in Iraq, first as a marine, but after his deployment, as a contractor. Roy is close to each of his family members, in the realistic way a teenage boy has. They don’t shelter him, but his parents and grandparents clearly cherish him. Jaye, a teenage girl who wants to be desired by her peers, is ripped from her California home when her mother, perhaps in a midlife crisis of her own, wants to be closer to Perry, also known as the Lamb.

 

Through the two of them, we meet townspeople and followers of The Lamb. We go to prayer meetings and gun shows and abandoned malls. Life in rural Texas in the early 90’s, before cell phones and iPad and social media, is engagingly depicted, and our imperfectly perfect characters, ultimately wanting mostly to be loved. In Johnston’s words, “Love is equally dyed in faith and fear. One life is always another life, another thousand lives.”

Along with the engaging story, Johnston’s writing is exquisite.

While I wanted to put the book down at the halfway point, where the downward spiral accelerates and leaves the reader believing there is only one end, as there was in Waco 1992. I admit to reading the author’s note before I went any further, where it was clarified that this was in fact fiction, though reliant on many of the details of reality. So, I kept reading, and found myself speeding through to find out what happened, I won’t spoil it, but I encourage you not only read the book, but by all means, to finish it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the review copy. We Burn Daylight was published on July 30, 2024.