Katie Arnold-Ratliff's "Bright Before Us" is not for the fainthearted. When Francis Mason, a second-grade teacher on a field trip with his students, stumbles upon a dead body on a San Francisco beach, he grows instantly and intensely weary. "The image of the body came back: nude, torn into, and without -- my God -- its limbs, color, or breath. I repeated the story to myself, trying to understand, and feeling for the life of me like there was something more, something else -- something that was humming beneath my consciousness, not yet ready to be examined." Ready or not, Francis' discovery sends him headlong into despair.

There are times early in the novel when Francis seems as if he's a character of Kafka's, persecuted by unnamed and unseen forces and tormented by a hazy cast of parents, school administrators and even a police investigator who wants answers about the body. There's a kind of existential promise, one that inspires curiosity about Francis and his misery.

We watch helplessly as he abandons his career and wife, staking everything on the pursuit of his memory and the prospect of happiness on the East Coast, where he's sure his high school soul mate, Nora, has gone. Arnold-Ratliff tells her story in alternating chapters, one chronicling Francis' relationship with Nora, the other describing the repercussions of the day at the beach.

Of course, happiness is beyond his reach. Arnold-Ratliff slowly peels back Francis' character, revealing an unhappy childhood, an innate callousness, and an abusive father and eccentric mother. Even if the explanations diminish the mystery of his unhappiness, there's no denying the acute psychological lens Arnold-Ratliff trains on her protagonist.

After a fascinating interlude in Nebraska, the two story lines converge in New York. Francis is reunited with Nora only to discover that his memory has misled him, and what he hoped to find in her company he's actually left behind in San Francisco. So as quickly as he arrives in New York, he turns back for home.

"I know myself. I will carry this pain as though it had meaning, balancing an unwieldy hope for a future -- extending outward, bright before us -- that will never arrive" he declares in the end, addressing Nora as he heads back to his pregnant wife. It's an ambiguous ending that leaves plenty of room for interpretation. And even if you find it hard to like Francis, you'll no doubt marvel at his character and the author's ability to capture his ambivalence and ennui.

Peter Geye is the Minneapolis author of "Safe From the Sea."