Allen Eskens

Twenty-five years of criminal defence practice in Minnesota sit behind Allen Eskens's novels. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota and a law degree from Hamline, and published The Life We Bury in 2014, since translated into twenty-six languages and winner of the Barry Award and a Minnesota Book Award finalist. The Stolen Hours (2021) follows Lila Nash, a law clerk in the Hennepin County attorney's office still waiting on her bar results, whose first significant case pulls her back to an attack she survived in high school. Saving Emma (2023) belongs to Boady Sanden, a law professor volunteering on innocence work, guardian to Emma Pruitt, the fourteen year old daughter of a dead friend, and trying at the same time to overturn a conviction that his friend had handled as his final case. Eskens has been a finalist for the Edgar, Thriller, Anthony and Nero awards.