Judd Foxman's wife, Jen, has left him for his boss, but after the death of his father and a week of sitting shivah with his enjoyably dysfunctional family presided over by their mother, a celebrated parenting expert despite her children's difficulties, the mourning period brings each of the family members to unexpected epiphanies about their own lives and each other.

Judd Foxman's wife, Jen, has left him for his boss, but after the death of his father and a week of sitting shivah with his enjoyably dysfunctional family presided over by their mother, a celebrated parenting expert despite her children's difficulties, the mourning period brings each of the family members to unexpected epiphanies about their own lives and each other.

Astonished when her seemingly devoted husband is found murdered in a prostitute's apartment, Susie, a mother of four-year-old triplets, bristles at her neighbors' mixed reactions and tackles everyone from her husband's partners to the DA to restore her family's honor.

"You think you know your father-but what if he kept secrets until the day he died? Just hours after delivering his father's eulogy, Ken Weintraub learns that this hardworking, unassuming man spent three years in prison. Consumed by the astonishing news, Ken sets out to unravel the mystery. As he pries information from old friends, relatives, and others, he pieces together a portrait that's full of contradictions. Was his father an assassin's accomplice? A gullible victim? Or a heroic, loyal friend? Everywhere he turns, he hears stories that surprise him. Even when he thinks he knows the whole truth, there's still more to learn"--

In this powerfully affecting novel—by the author of The Pawnbroker—Joe Berman, an immigrant at eighteen, fifty-nine now, and a hard-working Connecticut plumber, faces the loss of his deeply loved wife. The months that follow, months of wrath and rebellion during which he fights his way to a new idea of life, death, and God, are part of Berman's human season. But so are the years behind him, vividly evoked as the narrative travels back into the past.

A shocking phone call in the first sentence sparks a soaring tour-de-force saga in this tale of two brothers, years apart in age, who have become close late in life. But the freakish death of one at the book's outset sends the other reeling into a shattered yet strangely exhilarating re-visitation of their lives together.