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Seventy years old, ill, and bent by the
ravages of time and loss of self-respect, Old Jerry wants
to die. Charlie Simpkins, Old Jerry's grandson, is a petty
crook with a taste for trouble, alcohol, and the wrong sort
of women; his older brother, P.T., is sweetly naive and very
troubled and could just possibly be convinced that such a
death would be a kindness. But when Old Jerry fails to show
up for his birthday party and later turns up dead, Charlie
wants to deflect attention from P.T. He takes the rap, leaving
P.T. and a group of close friends behind, and serves in Vietnam
to avoid prison time. Several years later, Charlie returns,
angry and dangerous with a new wife and lingering nightmares
from the war. He finds that his brother is living happily
in a half-way house, his ex-girlfriend is gone, and another
friend is married. But family harmony eludes Charlie-he is
torn between living straight with his new wife and returning
to the familiar comfort and excitement of his criminal friends.
When another murder occurs, the suspicion falls heavily on
Charlie, though this is one crime he had nothing to do with.
With a persistent homicide detective on his back, he tries
to frame one of his friends for the murder when he learns
that, yet again, all evidence points to P.T.
A small and isolated world-a world where laws and taboos
are broken on a daily basis, and family loyalty replaces
moral accountability. Lisa Reardon's new novel is a deeply
involving and satisfying story that illustrates just how
far fear can drive us, and where love can sometime send us.
Lisa Reardon is the author of half a dozen plays and two
novels, Billy Dead and Blameless. She received her MFA from
the Yale School of Drama and lives with her husband in Chicago.
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