Product Details
Scribner, November 2006
Trade Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0743254015
ISBN-13: 9780743254014
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Flying home to New York after a much needed getaway abroad, private art conservator Mabry Kincaid learns that his downtown loft has been devastated by the World Trade Center attacks. Unable to resume his normal life, he flies south to North Carolina to visit his aged father, a widowed Episcopal priest who is cared for by live-in nurse Audrey Thornton and her grown son, Marcus. During his stay -- with help from his cantankerous father, Audrey, Marcus, and an alluring old flame named Gwyn -- Mabry is compelled to explore his tormented relationship with his father and a world he fondly remembers but has long since abandoned. Back in New York a week later, Mabry faces his old life, which lies in ruins before his eyes. There, he must once again confront change and uncertainty -- and a daunting disease that may prove fatal.
In an elegantly crafted and profoundly moving novel, Reynolds Price follows one man's wrenching journey to come to terms with two familiar worlds that have been radically altered.


-- Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Mermaid Chair and The Secret Life of Bees
-- Harper Lee
"Writing with depth and sustained honesty . . . Reynolds Price gives us an enormous gift: a way to see and understand our own selves in a world forever changed."
"Reynolds Price's seriousness of purpose remains undeniable. He is a writer who addresses life's urgent questions through characters much like ourselves -- fallible, frightened, lonely, seeking comfort, and sometimes even redemption, in the maelstrom."