Oliver Loving is Stefan Merrill Block's third novel. His first, The Story of Forgetting was deservedly acclaimed. He's really hit his straps with this one. Oliver Loving has survived a school shooting, and is in a coma, non-responsive. Ten years have passed, his family and the small town where the shooting took place have never recovered, but no one knows the truth about what happened and why Oliver does, and the reader learns what happened, without knowing whether Oliver is still aware in his comatose body. It all sounds terribly grim, but this is a powerful and life-affirming book, psychologically astute and peopled with rich, three-dimensional characters.