The new novel by David Guterson, bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars, is a modern retelling of the Greek myth of Oedipus.

One of the pleasures of this novel for insurance professionals is its insightful treatment of the actuarial profession. Rather than treating an actuarial career as an archetype of gray-flannel-suited boredom, Guterson uses it as a deliberate device to illustrate a major theme of the Oedipus story—the blindness of humans with respect to their fates.

This book review was published in the March/April 2012 issue of Contingencies.