At a recent event in Toronto, author Russell Banks spoke about the deep connection between victims and offenders, particularly in his own fiction. He quoted James Baldwin’s claim that the story of race in America will only be complete when it’s told from the point of view of a white member of a southern lynch mob.

James Kostelniuk’s ex-wife and two small children were murdered by his ex-wife’s second husband in 1985. Wolves Among Sheep recounts Kostelniuk’s attempt to come to terms with the murders, his struggles with the Jehovah’s Witness faith of his youth, and his correspondence with the murderer.

A compelling and heartbreaking read, the book makes complex connections between the author’s life, the murderer’s life, the lives of the victims, and the religion they all once shared. Kostelniuk untangles this web in clear, simple prose, writing in a tone profoundly free of anger. On occasion, though, the dispassionate tone of the book raises as many questions as it answers. Kostelniuk hints at the cult-like nature of the Witnesses and then drops the subject, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about the Witnesses’ culpability for the spiralling violence that eventually led to the triple murder.

Kostelniuk corresponded with his children’s murderer to find a sense of relief, or at least a feeling of resolution. He found little of the first, and only a small portion of the second. Just about the only firm point he foregrounds is his conviction that the so-called “faint hope clause” should be struck out of Canadian law. (The murderer is eligible for early parole under that clause this fall.) This is a remarkable book, though it ultimately seems an incomplete one: a full account of the demons that motivated the murderer, and the darkness in his soul, remains to be told.