Eric D. Goodman

Eric D. Goodman writes fiction, essays, and literary journalism shaped by close observation of families, neighborhoods, and the consequences of ordinary choices. Setting the Family Free is a novel composed of linked stories, each shifting perspective while following the aftermath of a family’s decision to release deer from a Pennsylvania farm. That act affects relatives, neighbors, hunters, officials, and people who never meet one another, allowing the book to trace responsibility through a community rather than through a single hero. Goodman’s structure gives supporting characters independent emotional weight while recurring events acquire different meanings from one section to the next. His other books include Tracks, a linked collection centered on a train journey, and The Color of Jadeite. Setting the Family Free shows his interest in narrative connection at its most explicit: private grief, public argument, and local rumor travel outward together. The result is less a conventional linear plot than a network of lives altered by the same disputed release.