Bandy Dorner, home from Vietnam, awakes with his car mired in a canal, his cabin reduced to ashes, and his pregnant wife preparing to leave town with her lover. Within moments, a cop lies bleeding on the road.

Eighteen years later, Bandy is released from prison. His parents are gone, but on the derelict family ranch, Bandy faces a different reunion. Tracy, his now teenaged son, has come to claim the father he's never known. Hot on his heels is his mum and Bandy's ex-wife. All three are damaged, hardened, haunted. But warily,desperately, they move in a slow dance around each other, trying topiece back together a family that never was; trying to discover if they belong together at all.

Brian Hart was born in Idaho. He spent years working as a janitor, carpenter, welder, and commercial fisherman before earning his M.F.A. from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. He was the winner of the 2005 Keene Prize, the largest student prize for literature at the University of Texas. Then Came the Evening is his first novel.