Fall, in its first weeks, scatters its footprints through the Shenandoah Valley---mist and color, shadow and cold---sparsely at first, and then with greater fury. As Our Burden' s Light opens, two families are caught on either side of a moment of small-town violence; subsequently fighting desperately to find their separate ways out of its grasp. One family combusts under the weight of loss, while the other is quietly buried by it. Debut novelist Patrick...