On the cusp of the great age of disco, and in a part of Brooklyn a million miles away from Manhattan, livesfifteen-year-old Valentine Kessler and her long-suffering mother, Miriam.

Valentine — Jewish, pretty, and a touch flaky — is an unremarkable teenager except for two things: she is a dead ringer for the Virgin Mary as she appeared to Bernadette at Lourdes, and her very being, through some inexplicable conspiracy of fate, seems to shatter the dreams and hopes of people around her.

John Wosileski, Valentine's lonely math teacher who adores her from afar, embraces the martyrdom wrought by his unconditional and unrequited love. Joanne Clarke, the bitter and sad biology teacher who schemes to be John's wife, reviles Valentine to eventual self-destruction. Valentine's best friend, a former figure-skating champion, humiliates her for the crime of being "different."

But Miriam Kessler — betrayed and anguished by the husband she once worshipped — —loves Valentine only the way a mother could — deeply, yet without knowing. Transposing one sensual appetite for another, Miriam eats and eats and seeks solace in a daily game of mah-jongg with her three girlfriends. The Girls, a cross between a Greek Chorus anda Brooklyn rendition of the Three Wise Men, dispense advice, predictions, and care in the form of extravagant gifts and homemade strudels. When Miriam's greatest fear for Valentine is realized, she takes comfort in the thought that it couldn't get any worse. But then something even stranger happens, and Valentine's mysterious presence becomes an even more mysterious absence.

Written in a naturalistic voice that echoes that of the characters, An Almost Perfect Moment is a dark and sharply comic novel about star-crossed lovers, mothers and daughters, doctrines of the divine, and a colorful Jewish community that once defined Brooklyn. Sagacious, sorrowful, and hilarious, it raises questions of faith and plays with the possibility of miracles with one eye on the caution: Be careful what you wish for.

"Writing with diamondlike clarity, high imagination, mischievous wit, and a whole lot of chutzpah, Kirshenbaum ingeniously and daringly inverts biblical tales and social mores to tell an exhilarating story..." Donna Seaman, Booklist

"A unique, wry, and poignant story about the complicated nature of love, life, longing, and loss by an extremely talented author. An Almost Perfect Moment will very likely make you think about your own life in unexpected ways." Elizabeth Berg, author of Open House

"A novel heartbreakingly suffused with all the awkwardness and mystery of love, and the aching inadequacy of the passions that shape our destinies for better and for worse. Binnie Kirshenbaum has aimed high, weaving threads of eternity into an entirely vivid tapestry of present-day Brooklyn." Tim Farrington, author of The Monk Downstairs

"Rapture, longing, troubled faith, cruelty, contradiction, regret, and kindness — An Almost Perfect Moment captures the strange and strangely common secrets that hold families together. Binnie Kirshenbaum?s terrific novel is seemingly effortless, big-hearted, crushingly insightful, and joyfully readable." Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women

Set in Brooklyn between the Eisenhower Era and the Age of Disco, a bittersweet novel about a mother and daughter whose search for faith and love leads to unexpected consequences.

“ Kirshenbaum...has an original voice and, even better, an original sensibility.”

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of two short story collections and four novels, most recently the critically acclaimed Hester Among the Ruins. She is a professor of fiction writing at Columbia University and lives with her husband in New York City.