Extinctions

Professor Frederick Lothian, a retired engineer (a concrete expert), has quarantined himself in a place he hates: a retirement village. His wife, Martha, is dead and his two adult children, Caroline and Callum, are lost to him in their own ways. Surrounded and obstructed by the debris of his life--he's a hoarder of modernist furniture--he seems determined to be miserable. Alone and with more than enough time to think, he reflects on the current state of his life and his past mistakes. In memory, Martha, Caroline, and Callum come to life--detailing a complicated and troubled family history. Logically, Fredrick knows that "for an engineer there was a bridge for every situation," but he has failed to understand his most complex emotional relationships or maintain the connections to those who loved him.

When a series of unfortunate incidents forces him and his spirited next-door neighbor Jan together, Frederick begins to realize the damage done by the accumulation of his lifetime's secrets and lies. At last, he has the opportunity to build something meaningful for the ones he loves.

Professor Frederick Lothian, retired engineer, has quarantined himself in a place he hates: a retirement village. His headstrong wife Martha, adored by all, is dead. His adopted daughter Caroline has cut ties, and his son Callum is lost to him in his own way. And though Frederick knows, logically, that a structural engineer can devise a bridge for any situation, somehow his own troubled family--fractured by years of secrets and lies--is always just out of his reach.

When a series of unfortunate incidents brings him and his spirited next-door neighbor Jan together, Frederick gets a chance to build something new in the life he has left. At the age of 69, he has to confront his most complex emotional relationships and the haunting questions he's avoided all his life. Unbeknownst to him, Caroline--on her own journey of cultural reckoning--is doing the same. As father and daughter fight in their own ways to save what's lost, they might finally find a way toward each other.

A masterful portrait of a man caught by history, and a sweeping meditation on the meaning of family, love, survival, and identity, Extinctions asks an urgent question: can we find the courage to change?