His complacent life disrupted by a new patient's declaration that he is his half-brother, psychologist Alexander Lescziak, the son of Polish TmegrT parents, is forced to confront painful truths about his life as he envisions his mother's relationship with a German prisoner of war. 50,000 first printing.
When a new patient declares that he is his half-brother, psychologist Alexander Lescziak, the son of Polish immigrants, confronts painful truths about his life as he envisions his mother's relationship with a German prisoner of war.
Psychologist Alexander Lescziak savors a life of quiet sophistication on Manhattan's Upper West Side, turning a blind eye to the past of his Polish emigre parents. Then a new patient declares that he is the doctor's half-brother, the product of a union between Lescziak's Jewish mother and a German prisoner-of-war. The confrontation jolts Lescziak out of his complacency: suddenly, his failing marriage, his wife's infatuation with his best friend, and the disappearance of his young lover and suicidal patient, Nella, close in on him. Lescziak escapes into the recesses of his imagination, where his mother's affair with the German prisoner comes to life in precise, gorgeous detail. As the novel unfolds into a romance set in England's Lake District in wartime, Frederick Busch reveals how the past presses in upon the present.
"A multilayered love story that affirms Frederick Busch's reputation as a writer of "sublimely dark work of almost unbearable beauty" (Wall Street Journal).
"A multilayered love story that affirms Frederick Busch's reputation as a writer of "sublimely dark work of almost unbearable beauty" (Wall Street Journal).
