The Amateur

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant: When a young woman, a golf prodigy, kills a caddy with a stray ball at the country club, the investigation of this freak accident reveals a dark and shocking tale of secret affairs, predatory men, and a teenager on trial.

1978: It is the first Thursday in August and temperatures are flirting with ninety when Mira Winston, eighteen years old, drives a golf ball from her tee toward the practice net near the clubhouse and caddy shack. The golf ball, weighing 1.6 ounces, tears through the net, traveling 150 miles per hour, and slams, with sickening force, into the temple of a high school junior named Kenny Foster, rupturing an artery and unleashing a torrent of blood. Kenny brings his hand to the side of his head, then topples onto his side. He's dead before the ambulance even arrives.

In the wake of this terrible accident--and everyone, at first, agrees it was an accident--Mira looks for comfort in all the wrong places: In her lover, Theo Catton, a married man three decades her senior. In her mother, a well-kept woman with secrets of her own. In the dead caddy's little sisters, girls bewildered by grief. But when the investigators look more closely at the torn net, when a detective recalls Mira's history of recklessness, and when Kenny's father spies Mira with her married lover, the affluent and mannered community turns on this once-promising young woman. A gripping story that takes the reader from the sun-soaked greens of a tony Westchester country club to the fluorescent-lit stand of a county courtroom, The Amateur asks: What happens when one small moment--a swing, a ball, a piece of string--changes the course of an entire life?

Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 08/04/2026
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780385551298


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/01/2026 pg. 100
Booklist 05/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2026
Publishers Weekly 05/04/2026

About the Author
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five books, including The Princess of Las Vegas, The Lioness, Hour of the Witch, Midwives, and The Flight Attendant, which was a Max series starring Kaley Cuoco. His other books include The Guest Room; Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands; The Sandcastle Girls; Skeletons at the Feast; and The Double Bind. His novels Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. His novels have been selections of Oprah's Book Club. He is also a playwright (The Club, Midwives, and Wingspan). He lives in Vermont with his wife, photographer Victoria Blewer, and can be found at chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Litsy, and Goodreads, @chrisbohjalian.