Wally Lamb's novel The River is Waiting is a daring exploration into the question if the weight of having been a good parent can atone for atrocity of killing one's child.
After the loss of his job, a stay-at-home father, Corby Ledbetter, killed one of his children in a car accident. He was sentenced to prison because blood test results indicated he was drunk and strung out on benzos. When the judge handed down the charge of manslaughter, she said some sentences were easy to decide, others kept her up at night. And Corby's was one of the latter ones.
For me, this book by Wally Lamb is both an easy choice (one of the best I have read this year) and one that keeps me up at night (from a heart-shattering story).
