How to Find Your Way in the Dark

Twelve-year-old Sheldon Horowitz is recovering from the tragic loss of his mother when a suspicious traffic accident takes the life of his father. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was a passenger in the truck as it was run off an isolated road in rural Massachusetts, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. 

He takes that fire with him as he moves to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Over the years, Sheldon, his teen-age cousins Abe and Mirabelle, and his best friend, Lenny, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hit men and angry accordion players, all the while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills. 

With his eye always on vengeance for his father’s murder, Sheldon must stake out his place in a world he now understands is comprised largely of crimes: right and wrong, big and small.  

“For me — as I’m certain it will be for every reader of the wonderful Norwegian By Night — Derek B. Miller’s new novel is a genuine literary event (Sheldon Horowitz is back!). Miller has long deserved to be a household name. HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK should finally make him one.

—Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Empire Falls and Chances Are...

I am convinced that Derek B. Miller’s HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE DARK (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 368 pp., $26) was expressly tailored to my tastes and that I am its ideal reader. I suspect others will feel the same way; it’s that kind of book … His character portraits are indelible, often heartbreaking. At times this novel moved me to tears, the highest possible compliment. 

— New York Times Book Review, 2021

Book cover designer, Jim Tierney, discusses the process of designing the cover for How to Find Your Way in the Dark and shows the covers that didn't make the cut. From Spine Magazine.