Seierstad works a small miracle here, rigorously detailing how a lonely boy became a lonely, dangerous man while creating just as much space to tell the stories of those affected by the massacre. We learn about the high school sweethearts, madly in love, who raise two sons the community adores. We meet parents who named their firstborn daughter after a snowfall in a hospital without electricity, years before they emigrate to Norway. I'll warn you that it was difficult to read about a mass shooting when our nation has so many. But Norway's communal spirit, and the humanity recreated through Seierstad's perspective, managed to elicit an unlikely feeling of hope in me.

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