The Silver State

Quotes

"Astonishing. Urza's tour of the American jurisprudence apparatus is intense and stunning. What makes it terrifying, and utterly riveting, is the cast of humans he sends into the teeth of that apparatus—people conjured with such deft perception, such deeply felt empathy, that one is physically relieved to come up from these pages and realize it is not one's own life, one's own soul, being decided. The Silver State does this wondrous and exceptional thing: it takes you into custody and will not let you go until its final and devastating revelations—and not even then. A breathtaking novel by a first-rate writer."—Tim Johnston, bestselling author of Descent, The Current, and Distant Sons

With The Silver State, Gabriel Urza marries a poetic legal thriller with midlife crisis noir. Written in a terrifically stylish hardboiled Great Basin lyric, the novel is an elegy for the guilty and innocent alike, particularly those destroyed by the carceral state. A scathing, mournful and long-overdue autopsy of justice in the American imagination—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness

"This intricate, hilarious, heartbreaking novel takes us deep into the American criminal justice system, as seen by a young public defender whose clients are often condemned—by poverty, racism, addiction, and indifference—long before they enter a courtroom. THE SILVER STATE is as riveting as a thriller, yet it is also the story of a society’s ethical erosion. Asking us to think hard about what passes for “justice for all” in the 21st century, it speaks powerfully and directly to our political moment."—Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks

"Gabriel Urza has written a propulsive, hallucinatory, urgent novel—an interrogation of morality and violence, of the allure and fickleness of narrative, of the porousness between guilt and innocence within a system that casts even the most idealistic among us as unwitting—and often witting—co-conspirators. An already-complicated institution as his subject, Urza complicates it further in surprising, unsettling, and ultimately necessary ways. This book will haunt you."—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist Yellow Bird

"Gabriel Urza’s riveting legal thriller pits an idealistic young public defender and his cynical whip-smart female mentor against the all-too-common criminal justice racket. Set against the backdrop of Nevada’s stunningly gorgeous and deviously unforgiving landscape, The Silver State mines the emotional depth of two committed lawyers snared in a minefield of corruption, bias, and cruelty. Reminiscent of John Grisham and Scott Turow, Urza brings his skills as a novelist and lawyer, along with the poetic voice of a native son, to a chilling and thought-provoking tale."—Sally Denton, author of The Money and the Power and The Bluegrass Conspiracy

"A humane and empathetic examination: this novel serves as a thoughtful character study, and an indictment of our flawed, thorny criminal justice system. Gabriel Urza writes with elegance and compassion, as he dissects the toll our system takes on this country's most reviled criminals, its most vulnerable subjects, and the noble people struggling to help within the confines of a graceless institution." —Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution