How long does it take to read Life We Bury?
Allen Eskens
Life We Bury by Allen Eskens takes about 8 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 27 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2014. 461 pages, about 126,775 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 5 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 27 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 17 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?
Subjects: Minnesota, fiction, Fiction, mystery & detective, general, Veterans, fiction
