Books like The year of ice by Brian Malloy

The year 1978 finds Kevin Doyle, a marginal high‑school senior in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, struggling to maintain his place among boys while dealing with the loss of his mother two years earlier, whose vehicle plunged into icy waters. Kevin’s relationship with his father, Patrick, has grown distant, and the arrival of lonely women seeking Patrick’s attention exposes a long‑held secret: Patrick once planned to leave the family for another woman, and the circumstances of Kevin’s mother’s death may have been suicide, not an accident. Adding to the tension is Kevin’s aunt Nora, a belligerent Irish immigrant who blames Patrick for her sister’s death and is fiercely religious. Over the course of the year, a series of painful revelations threatens to shatter the fragile bonds between family members and disrupt the lives of everyone connected to them.

First publish date: 2002