“I could never be a good father because I turned my back on being your son.” Perhaps Teddy Mathison is right when he makes this heart-wrenching confession to his dying mother, but is it really too late? The touching and surprising answer unfolds in this richly layered, tender story of a man who is primed to go far in life, but first must find his way home.

Teddy is a successful Los Angeles lawyer whose charm and formidable political skills have made him the leading candidate in the race to become the new U.S. senator from California. But behind the golden public persona lie some darker truths: his teenage daughter, Zoe, has barely spoken to him since his divorce from her mother and he has long been bitterly estranged from his own mother, a world-renowned painter. So when his sister asks Teddy to come back to Nantucket to spend some time with their ailing mother before Alzheimer’s steals her mind entirely, Teddy balks. But his campaign manager sees the perfect opportunity for a mother-son photo op that will jack up his weak family values poll numbers, and Teddy reluctantly agrees to the trip.

Once on Nantucket, Teddy is forced to confront feelings he’d long repressed. As he struggles with his mother’s illness and his daughter’s disdain, he learns some stunning truths—about the father he once

idolized and the shocking extent of his daughter’s pain. And when he meets a woman who challenges everything he thought he understood about relationships, he unexpectedly finds the life he never knew he wanted.

"Teddy Mathison, the hero of Goldstein's unabashedly cloying second novel (after All That Matters), is an ambitious California senatorial candidate called home to Nantucket because his Alzheimer-afflicted mother, world-famous artist Kate Longley Mathison, is nearing death. Teddy reluctantly flies back east for one last visit with his estranged mother, and campaign manager Judith Mackey conceives of the reunion as a shot at increasing the divorced Teddy's family values appeal. Accompanied by his moody 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, Teddy arrives in Nantucket prepared for the ultimate confrontation with his formidable mother, but is shocked by her withered condition. Before long, Teddy blows off the campaign in favor of helping his mother paint her last canvas, bonding with a self-mutilating Zoe and romancing Liza Swain, a local waitress/photographer with a tragic past. When Judith shows up on the island to remind him of his campaign responsibilities, Teddy is forced to choose between becoming the senator from California or the 'Prince of Nantucket.' If you think you know how it ends, you're right. But if you think you won't get at least a little weepy, you're wrong." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

“Recalls another Massachusetts dynasty–a clan of wild boys with political dreams and personal demons. Novelist Jan Goldstein is a wise and wry observer of what has changed beneath the face of American governance, and what never will.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Jan Goldstein is an award-winning

novelist, poet, playwright, and screenwriter whose first novel, All That Matters, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He is a well-known human rights activist and the father of five.