Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This astringent but always luminous book examines loss, displacement, and eventual renewal from the perspective of Will Ross, a 66-year-old widower trying to adjust both to his wife's recent death and his own retirement. Deciding to make his Maine summer cottage his retirement home, Ross fights despair as well as the blandishments of a somewhat predatory widow, Lil, Their brief (and wonderfully rendered) affair is as empty and banal as Will finds everything else. As the streets lose their tourists and the trees their leaves, he sees nothing but cold and barren days ahead. But, in an ending more opaque than convincing, Will finds spiritual rebirth in the form of a mysterious boy found sleeping in his son's old tree house." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)